Alter Aeon The Dawn of Time
by Eternalis
Summary: <html><head></head>The story of one famous or infamous NPC, his transformation from enhanced human to Otherworld demon, how Dentin found him, and his role in the end of the age of science and the dawn of the age of magic. You have to guess who it is..</html>
1. Chapter 1

Alter Aeon

The Dawn of Time

I am certain, for the record, that this most likely bears no resemblance whatsoever to the actual imagined chain of events that made the world happen. A practical mind designed it, and what I've heard, while slightly anticlimactic, is refreshingly solid and most definitely not dramatic. I have never been accused of not being dramatic. I promise nothing.

The story of one famous (or infamous) Alter Aeon NPC, his transformation (both mental and physical) from super-enhanced human to demon of the Outer World, how Dentin found him, and his role in the breaking of the world of science. Just thought I'd give the game-world's origins a WEIRD twist... Don't kill me. Rated T for violence and, well, I'll give it away so you'll just have to read.

Not all the music perfectly meshes, I am not a soundtrack composer, but if I were you could bet money on me writing one.

Listen to:

Sully Erna - Sinner's Prayer

Breaking Benjamin - So Cold

Disturbed - Indestructible

And as you move between the worlds... such sorrow makes us real. As first and last they journey same through nature's passageway... You're welcome, soul, to be with me. I'd happy be your guide. Teach to me what's been forgot, the old ways by and by.

-Aine Minogue - Between the Worlds

Prologue

One of the most distinguished warriors of the Third Age of the World-and a noted one of our own, the Fourth Age-was then called X, for he had shed his name and had no past. Most people simply knew him as Death, but until the Creator-Destroyer found him, he was nameless.

Surprisingly, he symbolized the dawn of the end of the Third Age. He still lives today, all these centuries later, the masked bringer of death, standing ever vigilant under Dentin's command. But no one knows that his origins are intertwined with the turning ages.

We live and breathe magic. It is as common as air, taken completely for granted. We draw on the colossal forces trapped within the earth to make us the superhuman elite, the Master-race. The ending of the Third Age rent the barrier between our world and others asunder. We commune with spirits and elements and time, we walkers of the worlds, but our hardships are many. We have no idea what the wonders of the previous age could have given us, and so long as the barrier between the worlds lies open, we will devote our time to keeping our world safe. We will never advance. When the next great War of Time approaches, when Dentin descends to Earth and frees Death from his binding, when the Gods again shake the essence of the universe with their words, we will stand gloriously on the brink of the Fifth Age of the World-and at our greatest moment we shall find our end, and the Gods' most trusted servants will follow them into exile.

But there was a time when that was unheard of. When the Creator sent his army, and his loyal face of Death, to break the barrier and destroy the armies of the Other Side, that world was finally ended. The dawn of the age of magic succeeded the age of science, but in its way, none of those worlds truly ended. The story is shrouded in myth, and of those who remain earthbound, only Death knows it in full. But he will never speak again, for Death is silent until he steals your life.

Chapter One

The transition between unconsciousness and wakefulness was so smooth, it was as if he had simply not existed, as if he had come into the world new and whole. His breathing and heartbeat did not change, and for all the others in the room knew, he was still sleeping.

He was acutely aware of his surroundings before he ever opened his eyes. There was an obstruction in the airflow, human-shaped, standing beside the table. He cast out with his senses and found that he was in his own room, but the familiarity of the surface beneath him could have told him that. A current of air flowed into the room to the left, but it was narrow and flowed several feet above his head. The door was partway open and someone was standing in it, and by the shape of the obstacle he judged that it was Taneia Amaari. Her breathing was tense and expectant, her heartbeat elevated with anticipation. The figure beside the table fidgeted nervously, shifting from foot to foot, and he could taste the human's nervousness riding the air. Something was seriously amiss, for little escaped Amaari's notice, and even less escaped the attention of the focus of an sixty-year project.

He opened his eyes. The man by the table cast a quick glance in his direction, and he savored the look of fear and deference in the man's eyes. That was as it should be, for he was the Nameless. If he wished it, the man would be dead before he could cry out.

"You're awake," Amaari said.

He sat up and merely nodded. As was his wont, he was silent and still and watchful.

"You're on a new mission," Amaari said. "I brought Dr. Alexander here to brief you."

He turned his eyes on the man by the table, scrutinizing him more closely. The doctor averted his gaze, and he didn't let the little flicker of satisfaction that he felt show. Those he went to find rarely saw his face, but he knew what he looked like to the man. He was tall and forbidding, his powerful body shrouded in black. His seldom-exposed face was full of plains and angles and hard lines, with a strong chin and prominent, angular cheekbones. His forehead was high, his nose angular, his eyes deep-set pools of utter darkness. They pinned the middle-aged scientist with a silent intensity that few could look into, flickers of red fire sliding by in their black depths. His jet-black hair was cropped closely around his unreadable face. The dim light accentuated the long plains of his cheekbones and cast shadows over the sharp angles above. His chin was in shadow, and darkness surrounded the burning glimmer of his eyes.

Dr. Alexander was thin, nearly skeletal, and terribly pale from living underground for years. His hands were large and spidery, his fingers long and nimble. He was all arms and legs, and would be much taller standing. His face was long and expressive, and his teeth flashed brightly against the white of his skin. His eyes were close-set, small, and watery, a blue so pale that it was a wonder he could see with them. His hair was pale too, and hung around his face in unkempt strands. He was fidgeting with something that glinted silver in the cold light.

"We have rumors of a new dimensional disturbance," the man said. "We're sending you to go check it out, in case anything comes through."

X let the silence that followed stretch out, amused at the man's discomfort, waiting for him to continue. He was many things, but patience was not one of X's strong points.

"Don't toy with him," Amaari snapped.

X spoke after a moment, but he directed his words toward Taneia. "If the mission is so routine, why send a human to brief me?" His voice was almost painfully deep, a bass you could nearly feel as well as hear. It was almost without inflection, but the word "human" was touched with the barest shade of contempt. In X's experience, that tactic spoke volumes more than overusing emotional tones, and he didn't miss Dr. Alexander's slight wince in response.

Taneia looked pointedly at the jittery scientist, and he continued, his thin tenor weak against the resounding darkness of the altered man's voice. "There could be Anti at the sight of the fracture."

Anti, X reflected thoughtfully, could pose a slight problem. But either way, its presence should not stop him. His senses were more than adequate enough to detect and avoid it.

"We have some protection for you against Anti, but it's obviously never been field-tested. Theoretically, it should afford some resistance for you, in order for you to dispatch the ... creatures more easily."

"There are few things that could become a serious threat to me alone," X said. He was more talkative in those days, but even this was a long speech for him. "It would take a strategically organized attack to bring me down, or a being of immense power. I was at the site of the last breach. It was too minor for a large-scale attack or an entity of any true power to cross."

"We examined your report. We understand the extent of the damage. But we think the ..."

"Eternals," Taneia supplied.

"... have staged another massive attack on the Barrier."

The existence of the Barrier had been known for about sixty years, since Zeia Amaari had proven it in 2020. It was now 2080. They had made X in 2030, in response to the rising demand for a solution to the Barrier's dissolution. X was a perfect killing machine, using the best of genetic engineering and what they could use of the Other Side's energy-channeling techniques. His bones were reinforced with special steel, which had been impregnated with ancient Otherworld energy in its very forging. His organs were reinforced with superhealing viruses, which were in turn bolstered by pure power. His own mind was an extension of the Other Side, for much of his senses depended on what the augmentations from beyond the barrier had given him. If the barrier returned to full strength, he would die. If the barrier went down, he would turn into something never seen in any world. As it was, he had to remain close to places where it had become apparent. The complex was located deep beneath the Arizona desert, adjacent to a cave system where a lot of Other Side activity had been dealt with, and it was here that he was strongest. The farther X went from a hotspot, the weaker he became, until eventually he would be as close to a normal human as he could be. He would have the advantages of this world, but none of those from the others.

"Where?" X asked tersely.

"A place in the mountains of India," the scientist said. "That region is notorious for dimensional perforations." He rose and motioned, and the lights darkened completely) One wall lit up and a cool voice queried, "Authorization?"

"Charles J. Alexander, A3347902CG16, Code Black, status yellow."

"Authorization granted."

He made a few gestures in the air, navigating through flickering screens until he stopped on an image of a map of the world. Red dots glowed on its surface, signifying open breaches. That number was growing disturbingly large, along with the yellow dots that signified perforations. He gestured over Asia, and it enlarged to show a glowing red dot in the south, in the mountains of India, near the foot of a particular smooth-faced mountain which the invisible line of the border of Tibet cut neatly in half.

"You will use our newly-discovered Otherverse bridge technique to get there," Alexander said. "You don't need to fuel the process alone-we've got you linked to the upwelling here." He was referring to the energy spring the breach in the nearby caverns had created.

Amaari withdrew something from beneath her long cloak and advanced further into the room, the dim light of the screen accentuating the exotic angles of her dark, fine-featured face. Her eyes were pure grey lances of light in her ebony face. Her black hair hung down her back, so completely dark it was like a captured fold of the night flowing around her body.

She extended one long-fingered hand, her deep blue nails gleaming in the dimness. In it was a heavy gold chain, coiled around something that glinted like a distant star.

He took it from her without even touching her skin. As he raised the necklace, its thick gold chain uncoiled slowly, and a heavy pendant swung free of her grasp. It was made of intricately-carved jade, the image of a proud bird with a white diamond chipped into the shape of a seven-pointed star set in its chest. Its eyes were perfect droplets of clear onyx, and he could discern each feather shaped with painstaking care.

He reached up and fastened the chain around his neck, and it fell beneath the rough black robe he was wearing.

"That pendant will enable you to link to the spring here using your innate abilities," Alexander said. "That way you can gate to India without too much trouble. We'll put you in a sim so you can learn the technique, but I hope you can do it quickly. We needed you there yesterday, and as it is your last chance is tomorrow morning." He didn't wait for X to respond, which was probably best. "Our sensors detect a small host of demons led by a mid-level sorceress and a battalion of undead soldiers. The problem won't be their abilities but their numbers. Dr. Amaari trusts your strategic abilities, however."

"Out of the fifty years we've been privileged to have X working with us, I've been head of the project for ten," she said. "He certainly has never given us reason to doubt his abilities. His ethics, however ..." She trailed off meaningfully. X was essentially a mercenary. There were rumors around the world of a creature called simply "the Executioner," or even more eloquently, "Death." There had been more than one event in which he was involved in the last five decades that didn't have to do with interdimensional matters.

"Well, X," Amaari said, "your sim is ready for you. Shall I leave you to it?"

He nodded silently. Dr. Alexander deactivated the screen and said, "Good luck." He turned and left, letting the door close behind him.

"I know you have an innate ability to rub people the wrong way, but do you have to be so condescending?" Dr. Amaari said.

Long familiarity with X gave her some leeway, but not much. "As you have always said, why should I deceive them?"

She sighed in exasperation. "That's not the point."

"Some things they will come to understand," he said. The ghost of a smile flitted across his face, but it was nothing like a smile on anyone else's face. It was a cold thing, a humorless curl of lips that spoke of many things, but joy was not one of them. "That is as it should be." The set of his face was utterly confident, the glimmer of his red-flecked eyes dangerously cold. He rose and went through the only other door in the room, to ready himself for the day and the coming mission. Taneia turned and left through the far exit.

Dr. Alexander was still on the other side, gazing thoughtfully at the door. He turned toward Taneia Amaari and sighed. "What have you created?"

"I?" she said. "I have created nothing-only improved on the original."

"Improvement ..." he murmured. Then, louder, he said: "I've seen his files. I know what he is capable of."

"I do not believe that man is yet soulless," Amaari said, "but I think he is close. If he reaches that point, he will have realized his full potential. And I don't think any of us want to be around for that."

"Are you sure he is still a man?" he asked.

"Functionally I know he is, there is an entire file on his physiology," she said, "but in any other way ... that's a good question."

"An important one!" he said harshly.

"Don't raise your voice," she said. "Even in his rage X is logical. There is no logical reason to betray us."

"He could eventually decide that his own survival was more important. If we close the barrier, X will die."

"As far as he knows, we're only trying to keep the outbreaks in check," she said.

"He's not an idiot, Taneia," he said. "How long until he realizes that we want it closed? How long until he decides we are simply expendable? We may not survive it if he figures out our deception."

"He doesn't know that," she said.

"_Do not underestimate him,"_ Alexander said. "It very well may be the last thing you ever do."

"I'll keep it in mind," she said. "Goodbye, Doctor."

And she turned away from him as well.


	2. Chapter 2

Listen to:

Breaking Benjamin - I Will Not Bow

Chapter Two

X reached up, pulling his helmet off. He disengaged the magnetic jacks from his temples and stretched, powerful muscles rippling under his skin. He rose and glided silently out of the functional, spartan training room. He moved like a noiseless shadow through the silent, orderly halls of the complex.

When he returned to his rooms, he found Dr. Amaari waiting. His equipment was laid out on the shelf, all of it affected with Otherverse energy. He picked up his heavy mail vest, with spells in the forging that warded his body and enhanced his resilience. His cloak created yet another ward, and boosted his energy store. The hood that fell over his face made him even more ghostlike, so that all you could see through all that darkness was the red-spangled glitter of his black eyes. His shield was a durable red metal reinforced with many varieties of wards, designed to work against the powers of the Otherworld. He wore heavy black boots, affected with intradimensional warp spells and tech, like seven-league boots. On one hand was a solid hematite ring, protection against the Otherworld mages' infamous ice spells, and on the other was one made of elaborately-formed silver, protection against some of their lightning and fire spells. Heavy, intricate silver armbands were protection against illusion. Black bracers contained spells that would draw on his energy to speed up his healing processes. There were black greaves that created a shield of misaligned energy around his body, and a heavy black belt studded with silver Otherverse runes that acted as a dimensionally transcendent container, meaning that there was more on the inside than on the out, as well as creating a complex web of resistance spells. Lastly he lifted the blade he carried, a silver scythe whose edges glittered with their very sharpness, its hilt plain and black. He bore a remarkable and frightening resemblance to the Grim Reaper, standing there with darkness boiling off of his body.

He turned toward Dr. Amaari and knew that it would seem as though a pure blackness with red-starred eyes in its center was looking at her.

"We have to go into the caverns to send you on your way," she said. "We have state-of-the-art wards on the complex."

The void nodded. He knows I hate it when he does that, she thought. Then again, that's why he does it. He likes how much he scares people. Being Death has become part of his persona. Maybe Dr. Alexander was right. X is becoming too dangerous. But he's also becoming too confident.

"You are willing to enter the caverns?"

She sighed. "I hate it when you do that."

"Exactly." He moved past her. With one long, powerful hand on the doorknob he asked, "Where?"

She sighed again. "The crystal garden."

He inclined his head slightly, red sparks dancing in his eyes, and swept out of the room.

Dr. Alexander entered then. "The caverns are like his training ground. All those things in there, he goes and kills for fun. Get rid of him while you still know his weakness, while you still have the genetic key-before this crazy ass unexplainable energy fixes that, too."

"I am not going to kill X," Taneia said.

Dr. Alexander looked at her, his face drawn, his hands fluttering. "You don't understand," he said.

"I understand. I know a lot more about X than you do. You see his records, I see the individual. The one doesn't tell you much about the other. I've worked with X for years—"

"You've said this before!" He proceeded on with his usual concerns, but Taneia interrupted him.

"Do you want to know, with all honesty, why I trust X?"

"All right, why?"

"I know that until he goes into the Otherverse, until he traverses that barrier, he's still essentially human, no matter where his mind comes from, my grandmother locked much of it, and he has only known us. ... In the battle for the caverns that we fought six years ago, he saved my life. Picked me up as if I weighed nothing and waded through a small army as if it meant nothing. Being too close to him was like touching fire and not getting burned ... I still remember what that felt like, Charles, to this day, being that close to him, and in a way it scares me ... Singlehandedly he saved the whole complex, while dragging me along with him. I've never seen something so ... You'd have to see it to know it."

"That was six _years_ ago, Taneia-a lot can happen in six years."

"The balance of our world might actually depend on him, the only creature of both worlds, and I won't use an unfair advantage that was all but _programmed_ into his DNA to plunge us over the knife's edge because you're scared!"

"Do you know you still have that advantage?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Does he still even have _DNA?"_

"Don't be utterly _ridiculous,"_ she said to him, almost laughing. "We still have that advantage, Charles; don't concern yourself with that yet."

"I really hate how you say yet," he muttered, and left.

She left the silent, spartan room to its ghosts and its demons. There was nothing that spoke of X in that room, because X left nothing in his wake but destruction. It was sparsely-furnished and almost painfully well-organized, almost as if it had never been lived in at all, yet he'd been living in it for five decades. She couldn't kid herself; anyone could tell this place was temporary to him. He was over fifty and didn't look a day above twenty-two-a very ancient-eyed, cold, inhuman twenty-two, but that was beside the point. Who knew when-_if-he_ would ever start aging.

Yet there was something heavy concentrated there, and to an extent it spread throughout the whole complex. It made the air thicker, almost hotter, and strands of power hung in it as if it was simply a byproduct of his existence, something that was breathed out like normal humans breathe out carbon dioxide. It was as if everywhere he went, reality bent, stressed at his presence, because he didn't belong here. Time shook and the world rippled and _things_ could _happen,_ things that hadn't started happening until the 2020's. How this world must rebel against him, Taneia thought. X's every moment is a struggle to survive, and that makes him harder and colder and paradoxically more powerful by the day. We've already found aliens-we created one.

X moved into the glimmering beauty of the room Taneia had dubbed "the crystal garden." The light slid away from him as if it couldn't bear to touch him, and he moved with such silent smoothness that he was like blackness in perpetual motion.

He paused in the center of the room, his eyes taking in his surroundings dispassionately. Stalactites like creeping vines done in clear quartz, onyx, blue tourmaline, smoky quartz, moonstone, jade, rutillated quartz and sapphire stretched from the ceiling, and pillars of amethyst, red jasper, rose quartz, clear calcite, bloodstone, lapis lazuli and carnelian rose like frozen flowers toward the ceiling. The walls were studded with ametrine, citrine, emerald, sunstone, green sapphire, ruby, black quartz, and hematite. The room was eerily silent, not even his footsteps echoed in its temple-like serenity.

Very soon, he thought, this Eternal-made work of stone shall be nothing but shards. As a creature based partially in the Otherverse, he instinctively knew that this world was reaching its dissolution. He could feel it coming, the way you can feel a coming storm crackling in the air, and he savored the approaching chaos. Dr. Amaari would never keep the Breaking in check. No effort of science could hold it back.

He lifted the heavy jade pendant from around his neck and bent his will toward it, pushing with Other Side power at its structure. He spoke something instinctively, from the Language of the Making, the Speech of the Breaking, and felt power respond. It rushed through his body like a rising tide, until he stood suspended in it. And then it crashed over him like the rippling mass of a tidal wave, pushing through the pendant in his hands like water carving its path through the earth, and he sealed the spell. Time, space, reality itself blurred and shifted. There was the sound of an immense waterfall roaring, wind and water and space bending beneath the crushing force of Otherverse power.

And then he was standing on a dismal, cold plateau, so far from the desert that he was actually above the hot air currents that hung over the land. It was desolate and rocky here, and there was nothing to see for miles except the jagged faces of the nearby mountains. The wind gusted around him, the single living thing standing on that deserted mountain. Far off to the east, the weak sunlight glinted off a lake's glassy surface, and the smooth face of his objective stood impassively. Lines of travelers moved toward its base, less even than ants against its bulk. He could smell death on the air, and a strange metallic tang that tasted contaminated. And over it all was the intoxicating rush of Otherverse power warping the substance of this place. He could follow it to its source even if he had been rendered deaf and blind.

As he strode toward the distant rock formations, the blackness surrounding him blurred and shifted until he was simply a moving distortion against the face of the world. He slipped silently between eroded rock faces, beneath heavy overhangs of crumbling granite and around tumbled, car-sized boulders. After a short time he reached a wind-scoured cliff face. A crack wound away into the depths of the mountain, like a hungry maw in the world. If he had looked up one more time, he might have still seen the mountain nearby, which he would be traversing beneath.

Resolutely he stepped through it and became one with the blackness within. He had no trouble seeing in the dark, and though the tunnel was narrow and treacherous, filled with jutting outcrops and sudden drops, he could avoid them all. He moved almost delicately here, as if whatever spell lay over this place could be broken by a sharp motion. Power radiated from him, hanging around him in heavy folds, making the air crackling and thick with the promise of lightning.

They were upon him with blinding speed. He spun, light and agile, and swept his blade downward, cutting through one of their skulls and decapitating a second. He turned and swept one aside, picked up another and flung it bodily against the wall, and kicked a third in the back of the head. Something whistled by inches away from his left ear and he twisted sideways, kicked the undead soldier in the face, and followed that with a neat sweep of his blade that sent the head rolling, tripping another of its companions.

He opened up to the energy coursing through the rock around him and spoke in the Speech of the Breaking, forming a complex series of gestures with one hand. Brilliant crimson flames leapt from his fingertips in a broad net, and he cast it over a knot of blue, flickering shapes ahead of him, which promptly melted and ran down the fissure like water.

He brought his heavy, curved blade down to catch another undead creature, but by sheer luck it ducked and sank its teeth into his sword arm. He lashed out with the other hand and neatly snapped the creature's neck.

By the light of the burning corpses around him, he examined the bite. The wound itself was shallow, but he could feel its poison in his system. He could probably withstand it, but he couldn't take any chances. The surface damage was already beginning to heal, but the internal damage could potentially be much more severe. And there were many more undead on the way. He should go find the mage that led them before things got out of hand.

He moved deeper into the cave system, following the intoxicating, heady taste of pure Otherworld energy spilling through the mountainside. It had a source, and it was the biggest Barrier breach he'd ever sensed. But he would only know for certain when he saw it.


	3. Chapter 3

Listen to:

Shinedown - 45

Chapter Three

The tunnel took a sharp turn and X stepped around the bend. What lay ahead made made even him pause, for it was both beautiful and terrible. The cavern that opened up ahead was filled with red, white and gold light, a shimmering play of color that moved in hypnotic patterns. Standing in the center of it all was a woman beautiful enough to give any male that appreciated a humanoid image of loveliness pause. She was slender but curved in all the right places, her soft skin a flawless, pale gold, her features delicate and exotic. The expression on her face was almost innocent, the kind of look that either brings out the best or the worst in people. Her eyes were a deep, drowning blue, serene yet alluring at the same time. Her lustrous golden hair swept down her back in heavy, silken folds. She wore a long, elegant red dress, trimmed with velvet and embroidered with strange silver symbols. Fragile, colorful rings graced her long, delicate fingers, and dainty golden bangles encircled her narrow wrists, tinkling a gentle major-key melody as she moved. Her feet were hidden by tiny, embroidered slippers, and she wore intricate silver anklets.

And a roil of pure, heady Otherverse energy was flowing from her like ripples in a pond.

She stood in front of a brilliant point in space and time, a humming rift formed from shivering blue light. What glimpses X had of the other side were of strange, half-formed worlds, places seething with chaos and unshaped energy.

She raised a hand toward him, silently beckoning. "Come to me," she said, her voice a lovely, rich contralto. "Join me, X, for I can give you that part of you which is missing. I can give you ... your name."

He wavered where he stood, for once uncertain. There was the complex, the entire Earth, the world he had sworn to protect-and X never broke an oath. It was unthinkable, unheard of, impossible, for him to break his word.

But every fiber of his being wanted nothing more than to stride into that play of light and take the answer from her, the key to his name. If this lovely creature could bring him that, then there would be nothing in this current world that could stop him. He wanted nothing more than to step through that portal, to be part of that world he was made to belong to. And this little creature would be the way there. She could release the energy to carry him there ...

The immovable, emotionless Face of Death was shaken as tantalizing thoughts whirled in his mine. Even he had no idea what could happen if he followed her. Perhaps the Breaking, which was long overdue, or perhaps ...

She pushed out at him with Other Side energy. It wasn't even a spell, it was simply a mental pressure, formed of the energy intertwined with the core of his being. She smiled, and there was something both predatory and sensual in her smile, as if she would submit to you but she knew that she could have you in the end.

He lifted his face and the hood fell away, exposing his harsh countenance to the full light of the witch's power. Slowly the color in his eyes bled from depthless black to a brilliant red, pools of burnished ruby light in his strong-featured face. They were the color of the elemental energy he could summon, infused with staggering power. For a moment he was outlined with blinding red light, his power rising in the room like the potential for violence or lightning or both-or maybe something else, if she manipulated the situation right.

"Exactly," she said softly. "You are a creature of the Other Side. Too long have you bowed to these frail humans who would presume to control their world."

He swept across the room toward her, into the midst of all that light. She seemed like a fragile, pale flower beside his immense height and raw power. He placed his hands on her slender shoulders and said, voice impossibly deep: "Open the gate, sorceress. Show me where I come from." He looked up toward the rift, the expression in his crimson eyes hungry and haunted, the look of a condemned man.

"Gladly," she said, her eyes sparkling.

He stepped slightly away from her, but she could barely breathe with all that contained energy pressed against her. She was a power of light and illusion, a flickering and fickle thing, and for all X's potential, she believed that she could deceive him. X was the one thing that stood between her master and the control of this world. If he was gone, the breaches would begin to disintegrate and the Eternals would be locked out. But before he vanished she intended to taste that bright energy for herself, to find in this world that of the other. If the humans knew that as long as X lived their world would would continue to dissolve, they would try to kill him. And they would ultimately fail, because he was so much more than they had imagined. He was capable of ripping this dimension up by its roots. Even in her world he would be very strong, and that was saying something, for the standards were much higher where she came from.

"Do it," he growled. "If I open that gate, my kind will take this world by storm, and there will be no end to the bloodbath that will ensue."

Finally something in his eyes gave her pause, sending needles of cold fear down her spine. She stepped away and hesitated, for a moment unsure, but the look on his face could have set fire to the world and razed it to the ground. He was X the Oathbreaker, Traitor, Condemned-he had become soulless, had sold it to the Other Side. He was of no worth or use; he was now simply destruction incarnate, not meant to exist.

She gestured, drew back the curtain between worlds, and let the full glory of the Otherverse be exposed. She looked up at X and her breath caught. He was outlined in shocking red brilliance, and the power that roiled out from him seemed to displace space itself. The air around them grew hotter until it was like standing beside a vent in the Earth. Crackling tension sang in the room until the air was thick and heavy against the witch's skin like the pressure before a terrible storm. Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the harsh lines of his face, to the tempest of light raging in his eyes. Black and gold fire chased itself around their edges, but their pupils were swallowed in crackling shades of crimson.

He stepped toward the rift and she cried, "X! Stop!" Terror gripped her-this was more than she expected, more than her master had bargained for, more than this world should be able to bring forth. It was more because he was X. He who should not exist would be the greatest among them, a god even among immortals.

Unthinking, she reached out and touched his arm and froze as fire coursed through her body. Her power meshed with his and was battered aside, as if a sorceress of her ability was nothing beside him. Touching X was like burying your hands in fire. She fell back, screaming and clutching her chest as his mind collided with hers in a hot, bloody storm. Agony blossomed in her chest and spread outward through her extremities, immobilizing her. She collapsed, clawing at her eyes, as the images in his head overwhelmed her. She saw unimaginable pain and unspeakable horror, battles so great that they rent the surface of the world. Seas boiled and mountains fell beneath the breaking of Time. The land buckled and rose into jagged young volcanoes, destroying entire cities as they toppled down newly-formed cliffsides and off of heaving young ridges. Vents opened in the ground and fire gouted forth, flames and molten rock devastating fertile plains and valleys. Rivers ran with acid and lava and cooled, leaving behind deserts of scorched obsidian. Entire countries were ruined by the clashes of countless, nameless armies. Bombs fell and scarred the earth forever, spreading their rain of deadly fire across once-breathtaking countryside. Forests of petrified, mutated trees grew out of cracked wastelands of black glass. Acidic tides washed countless corroded bodies on to beaches of charred black sand. And through it all a voice wove, laughing, laughing ...

"No, X," she whispered, now genuinely, completely terrified. Her blood ran from hot to cold and seemed to freeze. "No, please, don't ... don't do it ... Nooooo ..." Tears leaked from the corners of her burning eyes. The lights around them flickered and slowly faded out, leaving only the icy glare of the rift in the room, with X silhouetted in it, standing on the bridge between worlds.

Oathbreaker, the voice in X's mind whispered. Traitor. Leader of the damned. You are a product of the mating of magic and science, evil, defiled, unworthy. You are nothing, crawling creature of the earth, and without your power you would be a pale, deranged imitation of your current self. On and on that little voice taunted him, but he stood frozen in the gap, holding it open with sheer willpower, unable to move.

Suddenly he moved, stepping back into the world of man, slamming the portal shut with his bare hands.

"No," he said, so quiet that the witch at his feet felt the air shake with his voice, but could barely hear its tone. And then, louder, his words strangely magnified, he said: "I am star-stuff, essence of the outer reaches of the galaxy, fabric of the core of the world! And _you,"_ he said to the witch, his voice thundering, "are _nothing!"_

She rose, trying desperately to use her charm to stop him. Gripping his arm, she leaned into that burning presence, her eyelids heavy. "Join us," she murmured, "join us and gain power beyond what these creatures can give you. Come with me, Fire-eyes, and we can give you ... eternity ..."

Silently, he grasped her by the arms, lifted her bodily and flung her away from him. She struck the far wall and crumpled, her head bent at an unnatural angle, and her power slowly dissipated.

X the Nameless swept out of the room without a backward glance.


	4. Chapter 4

Listen to:

Breaking Benjamin - Give me a Sign

Chapter Four

He strode into the entrance tunnel of the complex. Wordlessly, the guards opened the heavy, steel-bound gates and he stepped through. Otherverse power still clung to him, making him even stronger and more formidable than before, so that he seemed to leave a trail of crackling, unseen lightning in his wake.

Taneia Amaari was standing on the other side of the door. She raised a hand and opened her mouth to greet him, but the look in his burning red eyes stopped her, freezing the words in her throat.

He paused in front of her. A moment of silence stretched between them, the tension growing thick enough to cut with a knife. Finally she reached out and said, "X ... what happened?"

His eyes flashed and flickered with black-and-gold flames. Wordlessly she turned and ran back into the complex, but he was amazingly fast-much faster than she would ever be. He leapt forward effortlessly and caught her shoulders, staring intently at her.

"Dr. Amaari ... Taneia." The only one who defends me in this place, he thought bitterly. They think I don't know how they hate me, with such poisonous malice in their eyes. Many simply call me "the abomination." "I killed the witch. Her minions are dead or banished. What do you fear now? What would you have me destroy?"

"It's ... you," she whispered. "Your eyes. Oh God, your eyes! ... Alexander was right-when there was a chance-the Barrier, you-: She broke away from him and fled, unthinking of the moment's meaning, not noticing his use of the specific pronoun.

For a second, he didn't notice either.

Then, unseen and unnoticed, his face hardened, drawing itself into lines so sharp they seemed almost brittle, like the edges of broken glass. Now I am truly alone, he thought, finally too inhuman to bear. In the end, you have to watch your own back. Anyone can be induced to stick their knife in it when you become complacent. Anyone's soul has a price-or a breaking point, like poor human Dr. Amaari.

Like the passage of a hot, dark wind, X stalked back into the depths of the complex. Wordlessly he kicked open Dr. Alexander's office door and stormed in, his face hidden once again. He was pleased to find the good doctor at his desk, but the man's irritating, fluttering nervousness only fueled his anger. Charles Alexander was a toady, and like all good toadies, he'd lick anyone's boots if they were powerful enough.

"What did you tell her?" he growled.

"X, I-w-what do you-?:

Placing his hands on the scientist's neat, polished desk, he leaned across the intervening space between them until he was inches away from the smaller man. "What is it you told Dr. Amaari?" he said, his voice deceptively calm and quiet. He still saw red shadows out of the corners of his eyes, so he knew their color had not faded to black.

"I-" The man's hands gripped the edge of the desk until his knuckles turned a mottled white color, blue veins popping out under his skin. The doctor was lucky to be alive, his body would not have borne his condition well. magic kept his organs running, and a small disc of white metal, a compact piece of human technology, clung to his side, a long cord snaking out of it, yet another disappearing through a port in to his skin. He looked like death warmed over, all weak muscles, papery skin, and huge, dark veins.

X savored the scent of the man's fear, but dismissed it. He was a creature of iron self-control. "No games, Dr. Alexander. I am not a patient individual."

"I t-told her to-no, whatever you do, don't!" He shrank back as X made a forward motion, his blade appearing in his hand as if by magic. And perhaps it had.

"No," X said, his resonant bass voice almost silky, "I'm not going to _kill_ you, Dr. Alexander! It is sorely tempting, but there is nothing worth losing control over." He slammed his fist down in the center of the desk, cracking straight through the wood until it was split nearly in half. "However, self control can only go so far. Even mine. I suggest you remember that, Doctor."

"I told her to shut you off," the man babbled, pressed against the wall, "the genetic key, while we still had the chance, while—"

X spun away and swept the remains of the office door aside. Then he was gone, leaving the smell of ozone in his wake.

He made his way more slowly this time through the maze of the underground facility. Using the techniques he had learned when he first began to control his otherworldly abilities, he calmed his racing mind, pushed back the storm of emotion within, and focused on emptiness. As he moved he extended his consciousness through the rock around him, feeling the lives of the many creatures in the caverns. Some burned with the effects of Other Side power, but others were ordinary Earth creatures. Bats, insects and the occasional spider were all the Earthly beings that coexisted with the humans in these tunnels, and most of the bats and bugs were banished to the caverns. People moved about their daily lives, eating, sleeping, working and dreaming. The ground was still and calm, unsullied for now by the forces that moved beneath it. For a moment, the world lay still, as if in slumber-even the thoughts of other creatures were muted.

When he reached his quarters he had regained his control and his impassive facade, but not the calm he had known before. That was shattered, and would take much more than a simple concentration technique to recover.

But the universe seemed to have other plans for him. He found Dr. Amaari, pale but composed, sitting in the main room. This time no one accompanied her.

She sighed as he removed his hooded cloak and put it away. "I thought you would be ... different."

He turned to face her, schooling his face to show no expression, a deceptively calm mask. "Why?"

"Your eyes, X, they were ..." She shivered slightly. "Like looking into pools of magma. I've never seen you that powerful."

"I alone am incapable of that much power."

"Then tell me what happened."

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "The mission was accomplished. I am not good at telling stories. There is little you need to know outside of my report, except that that particular threat has been purged."

"Don't be ridiculous. Even if it's just technical details, can't you tell me anything?"

"Perhaps." Flatly, he recounted the specifics of the tunnel fight and his confrontation with the illusionist. He was used to giving reports, but he usually did so in written or electronic form.

"It bit you?" she said. "And you did nothing? Don't get overconfident, X, it'll get you killed."

"I am not overconfident, Doctor. I am a realist."

"Bullshit," she stated flatly. "And when was it "Doctor" again?"

"When I lost my memories, if I had any at all. When your actions proved to me that I am no more human than the entities that I routinely kill. Take your pick."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Go away. What is it you think you can do for me? Why do you think I even need help? You do not have people on staff trained to treat extradimensional aliens, do you? Then do not assume something is wrong with me."

She stepped back. X didn't attack with words-X didn't need to. But he had proven to be just as effective with that tactic as he was with every other attack he learned.

In a brittle, hard voice, she said, "What is it that makes you think that I _want_ to help you? After all, I'm _human."_ She threw the word across the room with as much contempt as she could muster, turned on her heel, and left the room, letting the door slam in her wake. It was done in an inexcusable lack of self control, but the edge she'd been kept on for so long was wearing her thin.

It was necessary, he thought, doing that to her. It has severed any ties I could have forged with her. Now there is no potential for mistakes between us-except the potential to underestimate one another.

Every soul has a price. I will either make sure that mine does not, or I will become soulless.

He sank into a meditative position in the center of the room, took several breaths, and entered a light trance. There was the matter of the poison in his body that needed to be taken care of. Undead poison, while sometimes not very strong, had a habit of replicating itself quickly. And the more it grew, the stronger it became.

Taneia had finally worked up the courage to go back and see X and tell him how ridiculous they were all being, how they were on edge because of recent spikes in Otherverse activity, how they could smooth over their disagreement and go on as before. A list of excuses piled up in her head, and finally she simply convinced herself to go before she could convince herself not to. No matter what the doctor said, the rest of the complex had to remain like a well-oiled machine, and having an emotional X and an overstressed head of the project was more than it could handle.

Determinedly she set off, her footsteps echoing in the silent corridors. She knew already that anything she said to him would be useless. He was closed off to anyone now, as alien and cold as the Barrier, but a lot more immovable. She was either making a grave mistake or having no effect at all, but if nothing else, they all still had to cooperate. She had gone and seen the ruins of Dr. Alexander's office, which had probably been what finally decided her on that point.

She reached his door and stood silently in front of it. It was like any other entrance along the endless corridor, a grey metal door set back inside a drab, colorless alcove. Unmarked and unlocked (everyone knew the room; he didn't need locks to keep people out) it stood, offering no hint as to what kind of reception awaited her on the other side. Because she knew that X already knew she was standing there; his senses were more than adequate enough to tell him that.

And then she pulled up short. What am I _doing?_ she asked herself. _ I'm_ in charge of this project, not X. He knows I'm important and can't be gotten rid of. He's so terribly cold and logical after all, the ever-practical great one in there.

So why am I worrying so much about what he thinks of me? Not _it-he._

That question nearly made her turn back. She could always get someone else to tell him to shape up, and it would follow logically in his mind that there was nothing he could do about it except ignore them. X's tactic of standing impassively, pretending people didn't exist simply to unnerve them, was well-known. And he had become _extremely_ good at it. Or she could summon him, but he might choose to ignore her.

But, she thought fiercely, I am not one to shrink from something I've set myself to do, and I am not one to let my emotions cloud my judgment.

Yes, _my_ _emotions,_ she thought, harshly driving that realization home.

She stepped up to the door and knocked resolutely. There was no response from within, so she waited outside.

And waited ...

And waited.

Uncertainty of a completely different kind settled over her. X would either tell you to go away or come in. If he wanted to ignore people, he would be somewhere else.

Her mind flashed back on the nearly-healed bite wound on his forearm and she cursed. He _hadn't_ gotten that purged like she'd told him to. Goddamn him, he'd become arrogant enough to think his half-human, half-Other system was all but impassable.

"Jesus Christ," she muttered, and, steeling herself, she pushed open the door.

The room was as painfully empty of personality as ever. X was sitting in its center, his head bent so she couldn't see his face, somewhere deep in trance-or worse. He was still drawing on Other energy, but it was so minimal that she only felt it as a sense of unease, of _otherness_ in the air-the sense of X but greatly diminished. The room was utterly devoid of the crackling energy he radiated as easily as he breathed, and after years in his presence, the air seemed thin and empty.

She walked over to him and looked down at him. He was extremely tall, but she was tall for a woman, and almost curled up as he was, he wasn't as tall as her.

She knew that he couldn't ingest most things from this world, because it would put his system into some kind of shock they'd never seen before. Once they had to save him from complete systemic collapse because someone shot him, but it was only a grazing blow. It wasn't the bullet that was a problem, it was the garden-variety poison in the tip. So if the zombies had been raised on this parallel and one had bit him, then it might follow that its mundane, Earthly poison was destroying his semi-elemental, half-alien body. He had eaten prepared human food once and slipped in to a coma. They were very careful what they fed him because regular sugars and spices were like poison to him.

"X," she said softly. "X, can you hear me?"

But he remained as still and unmoving as stone.

She reached out hesitantly, pulled her hand back, reached out again, and placed it on his shoulder. She shook him lightly. "Snap out of it. Come on, X."

His head lifted slowly, turning this way and that like a sleeper rising from a terrible dream. His face looked awful, pale and lined and ancient, and his eyes were starless, depthless black.

For a moment his face registered only confusion, and then recognition dawned in his eyes. "Taneia," he murmured, "where have you ...?"

Then, too fast to register all at once, his hands moved up toward her face, trailed through her hair and came to rest on her shoulders.

"X, what-?"

With sudden, almost fevered strength he pulled her down against him, so close that she could feel the fine trembling in his body, the infection in his system making him weak and energetic all at once.

"I only need ... a little of your strength ... to augment mine," he murmured weakly. She had never heard weakness in his voice, and it frightened her. His face came to rest in her hair, his breath warm against the top of her head. "A little to give me the key to staying alive ..." His arms tightened slightly, and she could feel the incredible strength in his body. If he wasn't careful he could crush the life out of her, even in this state. It aroused a strange boil of emotions within her, and she fought to regain her composure. "You, you have the humanity that would save me from this. And … I want once … in my life … to feel human. I was made to be one, and I never have ... not elemental for a moment, mortal for all this time ..."

"You can be healed," she said. "You don't need me to heal you."

He put one finger under her chin and tilted her face up until she could meet his eyes. Red fire chased itself around their edges, and the look in them had little to do with what Taneia thought it would, and a lot to do with something frightening, something she couldn't name.

She started to pull away from him, but he tightened his grip on her and she stilled, like a frightened rabbit. He was on the edge of his control, and she didn't want to think what would happen to her if it snapped. She had to be careful too, lest she inadvertently send him over that edge. She stayed so still that the only sign of life in her was her fluttering heartbeat, like a trapped bird in her ribcage. The sound of it, the taste of her mingled emotions, was enough to unbalance that knife's edge he was on. But it didn't send him over, not yet.

Control, he thought to himself. Even in this weakened state, I must retain control. It would not do to kill her. I must be careful, so very careful with her. She is fragile, she is only human. But by all the Higher Elementals, I need what life-energy she possesses, only a fragment of it, only ... The way she looked when she saw his eyes change, that moment of complete vulnerability, flashed back into his mind. It could bring out the best in him, but it could also bring out the very worst in him.

He stood slowly, drawing her up with him. Even normally, X's body temperature was much higher than a human's, but now the warmth radiating from him seemed nearly substantial.

"Taneia," he said urgently, "I need you to listen. While I am still present, I need you to hear me." Fighting for control, he took her face in his hands and again turned it up to meet his eyes. The red in them was spreading across his pupils like a lake of blood and fire.

"X," she said, finding her voice, "You can't. I can't." She waved her hands helplessly, but it didn't quite work because she didn't have very much room. "You're ... There are ways to heal you."

"Of course," he said, a touch of his old coldness back in his voice, "none of which are currently possible." His pupils were only dots in pools of liquid light, centers of absolute blackness that she could fall into and never come out of.

"You would hurt a normal human," she said. "You could kill me so easily."

Something haunted crossed his face. "But I am X," he said, "the nameless, known for my determination and my willpower ... among other things ..." His voice became little more than a whisper, a deep tremor in the air. "If I die, this place will not survive it. The release of energy would kill thousands of people, and its far-reaching effects could kill millions. Your world would be forever warped, if I am not properly separated from my mortal body, and you have no means with which to do that." He drew her into the circle of his arms again, holding her slight frame lightly against him. To him, her body was so delicate, it was akin to handling a tiny bird.

"Trust me," he said, so softly she could only feel the words against her hair. "If you ever have, Taneia, trust me. ..."

She gazed up at him. His face was so inhumanly perfect that it made her heart hurt to look at it, but it was a cold perfection.

Slowly she responded to his touch, running her hands lightly up his arms to his shoulders, pulling him down toward her. He lifted her bodily and set her on the bed, and she reached higher as he bent over her, tracing the line of one sculpted cheekbone. She couldn't remember if she'd ever touched his skin for any reason, and for some reason, despite his warmth, she had always imagined it to be cold, but it wasn't. His eyes were the color of the red in a sunset at their outer edges, drawing to a fiercely glowing garnet around the pupils. His power rose slowly, as if he had summoned it from a great distance, and it pushed across Taneia's skin in a rush of prickling warmth, making the whole world light and strange for a moment, the air packed with more energy than it felt like it could hold.

Summoning his power seemed to drain much of what remained of his energy. He sank down on to the bed, managing to clamber up beside her before his body betrayed him and his muscles gave out.

She propped herself up on one elbow and reached out to him. His hands met hers, his eyes meeting her gaze with the color of liquid, shimmering ruby. Slowly, ever so carefully, he drew her down beside him until the warmth of both body and magic was wrapped around her.

"Trust me ..." he said, his voice urgent. A hard thought could have closed the space between them.

"I always have," she whispered.


	5. Chapter 5

Listen to:

Evanescence - Field of Innocence

Chapter Five

The resulting backlash of energy radiated from its epicenter until it reached the breach. It was pure elemental energy combined with the creation energy of both worlds, and it summoned a wave of effects that spread for miles. X was true to his word-no one died, not even Taneia. But X in human form, lacking his former natural understanding of the nuances of interworld elemental clashes, could not have foreseen what it did to the nearest breach. It treated the break in the Barrier as it treated everything else, and instead of closing it, X's power strengthened it.

He woke weak but completely healed, but that wasn't what had brought him back to consciousness. His senses were so acute that even in sleep, he had felt and analyzed the faint tremors emanating from the breach and known that something was amiss.

Moving lightly, he stood up and moved silently around the room, gathering his things. He tried to gauge the size of the approaching force, but it was hard to do from this distance and with this much interference. By his internal timesense, he judged that about eight hours had elapsed since Taneia came to find him, six of which they had spent sleeping. He didn't need to look-he knew it was exact. There was no time to consider what he had done, only the more pressing matter of what was encroaching upon the tunnels of the complex.

He sensed the slight change in Taneia's breathing that told him she was awake. Standing with his hand on the doorknob, he turned back and looked at her. "Stay here," he said, all evidence of earlier events gone from his face and voice.

"X," she said, sitting up, "what's happening?"

"Don't concern yourself with it, Taneia. There is little you can do with your energy as low as it is. You'll feel it soon enough, but your body is resilient, if fragile. It will pass."

"Are you coming back?"

"Of course," he said with a touch of his familiar, cloaking arrogance, his best way of keeping the world out. "I always do."

And he left, the door closing quietly behind him.

What am I doing? she thought numbly, putting her head in her hands. I've compromised my position in the project completely. And then she felt like a bitch for the thought.

I spent the night in X's bed, she thought. Dear God. How much more complicated could I possibly make my life?

Suddenly, inexplicably, she was crying. She buried her head in her arms and sobbed-for herself, for she would never have her questions answered; for X, who was the son of neither race, condemned to be hated by both yet forced to bear the weight of responsibility for both; for the people of the complex, who would be rent limb from limb by Otherworld creatures if X couldn't stop them; for her people, for her world, for life. She wept bitterly for a sorrow too great to name, for a boil of emotion too dangerous to explore, for two worlds fated to kill one another, for something so much bigger than herself. It was too much, she was only human, she couldn't contain something so infinite, with its potential for wonders beyond human dreaming and nightmares beyond human imagining. It was immortality, it was why X appeared mortal-because if he were allowed in this world to shed the humanoid cloak, assume his immortality, and rise fully into his power, then no human could stand before it. The Other Side would leach into this world and begin to make it its own. And yet he was nowhere near the greatest of the order to which he belonged. They knew that much, for he had told them that much, and her grandmother had recorded it. There was far worse than X out there, and that was the most frightening fact that Taneia had had to come to grips with. This world was so, so very fragile in comparison to others that X, who could probably be challenged by their equivalent to humans, could tear it apart.

I am the leader of this project, Taneia thought. I can only cry for a moment. I shouldn't even cry at all.

Slowly, she lifted her head, and felt around inside of her mind until she reached a dark, cool, shadowy place where she was nothing but herself.

X had a habit of moving without anyone noticing, as if the fabric of the world responded to him even here. Suddenly he was gone and suddenly he was there, standing in front of her, the door closed behind him. How he had gotten in silently was beyond her, but she just didn't ask anymore.

"Taneia?" he asked. "What is wrong?"

"I ... everything!" she said. I feel like one of those stupid girls in vids who can do nothing but cry, she berated herself.

He moved over to her and carefully pried her hands from her face. "Perhaps you are being affected by the energy deficiency."

She choked out a laugh. "You really don't know, do you?" She saw something on X's features that she never thought she'd see there: confusion. She started to laugh again and then stopped, knowing it would turn into hysterics. "You've never cried. You don't have tear ducts. You don't know what tears are."

"Of course I do not have tear ducts. I thought it was not worthy of note."

"Well, that's what's happening to me," she said. "I'm being human."

"I have stopped attempting to understand human subtleties," he said.

"Good for you," Taneia said. "You're an elemental in a mortal body, so it doesn't matter if you don't, but we all have to. I suppose you don't have much concept of emotion, either. You don't know the half of why I'm crying. You don't know that no matter how amazing spending the night in your bed can be, it complicates _everything_ for me. You can just go on like nothing happened, because doing that was a necessity, it kept you alive."

"There is no such thing as luck," he said.

"Easy for you to say," she shot back. Control yourself! she thought. Don't PMS now, that's ridiculous.

"Taneia," he said, using that deceptively calm tone of his, "you have no idea what goes on in my mind. No matter how much you let down your barriers to me, there is no way for you to understand that. Because if I do so in return, it will destroy your mind. You could not encompass it. My kind treats emotions so much differently than yours that there is no commonality for you to bridge the gap with. But there is no time for anyone's emotions now, because the force approaching the complex has the potential to destroy it and the desert above us and _half of the country._ We all must be masters of our bodies and minds. There is nothing else we can control." He stepped away from her. "I will go out into the caverns and do what I was made to do, and I will return because I have no choice. Your grandmother bound me to this place, in this form, for a very specific task, and that will not change until I am unbound or the foundations of the world are broken."

And the door shut behind him.

Sighing, Taneia rose, found her clothes, and got dressed. She stepped out into the hall and found Dr. Alexander waiting for her.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

"I went to talk to X," she said. "We had a disagreement. It could have compromised the project."

"For eight hours?" he asked pointedly.

"I told my room not to respond," she said.

"Your room responded," he said. "It said you weren't in, and said you left no reason for absence. You can't tell your room to do that." He leaned forward. "You've become biased. What are you doing, fucking a _freak,_ spending your nights in an Outsider's bed? You could be removed for that. And then you'd be just where you were before, when you'd graduated from university, with nowhere to go because you had a _freak_ grandmother, and no one wants an Outsider working for them, not unless it's bound."

She knew that there was traffic in illegal magic, that there were a lot of Outsider assassins, mercenaries, and spies these days. That was what humans called the entities from the Other Side-Outsiders, demons, freaks, aliens.

"My grandmother didn't fuck an Outsider," she hissed. "They're incapable of siring children, no matter how perfectly made their mortal forms are."

"Are you certain of that?"

"It's never been recorded."

"How many have been named? How many have been bound to mortality? How would you know that?"

Her blood ran cold. "Mutations," she muttered. "They were always blamed on radiation ..."

"The elite Outsider forces of various governments-kept absolutely secret, of course-have been basically given free reign. Their only binding agreements were to complete their tasks. There were no "do's" and "don't's" for them-because no one understands the nature of these creatures. Freaks are evil, Taneia, and they have no qualms whatsoever, no conscience, no soul. They lust after the lives of mortal forms but hate them just the same. They are wild energy, nothing more and nothing less-they are chaos, they are so much more dangerous than even we have imagined. People don't understand that they have to lay down ground rules, and the whole world has suffered for it."

X is no low-level entity, she thought. He has a nearly flawless form, created for him by our scientists. He didn't make it from wild creation energy on the Bridge. We bound him to it. And we left nothing out. The cover had to be perfect.

"He was poisoned," she said. "He said that he needed a fragment of human life to give himself the key to healing—"

"He could have lied," Alexander said.

"He can't _actually_ lie, Alexander."

"If it's not in his binding contract, he can lie through his teeth all he wants. Did your grandmother strictly state that he had to be completely truthful? Did she make him agree?"

"I ... I'd have to look at the record of the ritual ..."

"No you wouldn't," he said bitterly. "You've memorized it. She didn't say a thing about that. It wasn't supposed to be such a long-term assignment. But because she designed it the way she did, he didn't depart when she died. He didn't die, like any goddamn mortal is supposed to. What are we supposed to do, drop an A-bomb on him? _Can he really, truly die?_ His assignment wasn't to complete a specific task. It was worded very carefully. He was supposed to stay here, keep an eye on the Barrier, and eliminate any threat that came out. He was told what she considered a threat, but he could also use his discretion, to an extent. He knows more about that shit than any of us do, because he's part of it. And guess what's the worst part?"

"Can it get worse?" She thought she already knew. She knew most of what he was saying. How long had it been pushed to the back of her memory by what she thought were more pressing matters?

"Oh yes, it can," he said. "X is the highest-level creature that has ever been successfully summoned to this world. To avoid enemies getting the information, she erased all knowledge of his name. We can't raise her from the dead and ask her. Just as you need the name to summon him, you need the name to break his contract and send him back. X isn't nameless, because otherwise, your grandmother could not have brought him here."

"Can we recover his name somehow?"

"He doesn't even know it. She locked it in his mind, and no one knows the code to make him remember it. Your grandmother was extremely intelligent, but she couldn't foresee every eventuality. What if you have his kid, Taneia?"

"It will technically be human," she said. "He has a human body, roughly speaking."

"It will be enhanced," he said. "It may or may not be born with a human personality. Due to the nature of it, something could be pulled from the Outside to constitute its soul, its mind and personality if you will. But this is all hypothetical. All half-breed babies so far are either too young to be certain about, or too mutated to make much of a difference."

"Hello, Dr. Alexander," a deep, measured voice said from behind them. It was as cold as ice, but so calm that it was nearly serene. "I did not expect to find you here. Perhaps you should be aware that there is a host of mid-level demons, led by a very high-level sorcerer, in the nearby tunnels. Since you put so much stock in science and so little in magic, you could attempt to withstand their assault. However, the odds that you will succeed are ... pitifully small." The last words were tinged with the barest hint of contempt, which somehow managed to communicate the blistering scorn X had for the doctor. Necessity forced him to speak, and a little, tiny spark of pettiness put the contempt there.

Alexander's look said it all. He knew X had heard everything. He turned and hurriedly left, without a backward glance.

Taneia whirled on X. "You knew! Goddamn you, you knew!"

X simply nodded. So it was back to the silent treatment they'd endured from him for most of his mortal life. This only served to further fuel her anger.

"What did you do, simply use me? What's your purpose? No-I won't ask-you're simply an Outsider, God knows what you all—"

"Dr. Amaari." X's voice boomed in the high stone corridor, cold and expressionless and so terribly deep. "Calm yourself."

"I have a right to be pissed!" she raged. "My grandmother summoned you to protect the balance and you have broken her trust! You've brought down everything I promised to protect! Where's the loophole? I know you found one, you're all the same, looking for loopholes in everything!"

She turned and started to walk away. One minute X was several meters away from her, and in the next eye-blink he was beside her, as if he had traversed the intervening space without actually moving (which he might have done), and he was turning her to face him, his eyes flickering with red flames.

His voice was so deep she could feel it vibrate around her, a living sound breathing in the air. "If I were a lesser being, with the control of such, you would have made a very grave mistake-one that would have cost you your life."

He released her and she staggered backwards, stunned.

"Calling one of my kind an oathbreaker is the worst insult imaginable and would have normally initiated a duel to the death," he said. "It means that our entire existence is worthless, in a way that you cannot imagine. There is no comparison for it in your culture."

"You could have told me."

"Theoretically, I can control my internal chemistry to such a degree that I could avoid impregnating you," he said. "Although, admittedly, I have never tried it. The situation never arose. I am not ... like many of my brethren ... with an inexcusable lack of self-control."

"Fantastic," she said. "So it may or may not have worked."

"It would be too much for me to ask you to trust me, wouldn't it?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. But it was such an un-X-like question that she had to wonder what he was getting at.

"We must be ready," he said, "for the storm is coming and all shall fall before it."

Taneia Amaari knew magic when she felt it, and X's words resonated with power.


	6. Chapter 6

Listen to:

Breaking Benjamin - Unknown Soldier

Chapter Six

The complex was as ready as it could ever be. X was out in the tunnels, beyond the safety of the perimeter. Taneia had objected to this, but he had flatly told her that she was just being emotional.

"I will be no safer out there than in here," he said, "and I am more suited for this kind of combat than any of you. After all, isn't this the very thing I was summoned to do?" So he had gone, with his unreasonable arrogance like a second skin, and they had heard nothing of him since. They could track X-and the enemy-on the sensors, but there was no way to assist him until he came closer to them. And they all hoped he didn't have to until everything was dead.

"This will not be like India," he had said. "I killed the illusionist, and all of her forces fell. It is possible that their leader is on a level with me, therefore eliminating his minions will not be so simple. And eliminating him may not unbind them."

"What will happen if you kill him?" Taneia asked.

"That is impossible to discern at this point," he replied. "It could have no effect, or it could cause this entire system to cave in."

"Good to know," she said sarcastically.

"However, it will definitely strengthen the breach," he said. "We could evacuate the complex, but guarding this entire section of desert would be much less practical."

"Talk to Tilin about that," Taneia said. "He's the tactician, and you've got a better idea of what we're up against than any of us. You two can devise a plan. There's no time to run it by me, but I'm leaving it to both of your discretion."

"So good of you, Doctor," he said, voice dripping sarcasm.

"Would you not? I put up with enough shit from you already."

"As you wish." He swept out of the room with a flourish, all power and deadly grace. _ Narcissistic_ _bitch,_ Taneia thought.

She sighed. He was just going to be deliberately difficult. How very typical.

She hadn't said any more to him. He had gone to talk to Tilin, and then he had left. And now all they could do was sit on their asses and wait for his report. And all she could do was try any tactic she could come up with to avoid thinking of him. How could things in the complex have changed so quickly? X acted like nothing had changed. How logical-and typical-of him.

But the tunnels remained quiet for now, unwilling to give up their secrets.

X was simply a part of the blackness. It was his place to remain unseen, and he knew it. There was no place in the world for a creature like him. It was simply a fact of existence, and you didn't try to change those.

He cast out with his senses, letting his awareness flow through hollow spaces and growing rock, until it swept across something alive. Locking on to it, he moved in its direction, taking care to draw a shroud of silence and darkness around himself. Meanwhile he kept probing their lines, testing their formation with his awareness, looking for weak spots in their forces. They were closing in on the complex's entrance, meaning that somehow they knew the layout of tunnels. They were moving as equidistant to one another as they could, forming a silent ring in the branches to the main tunnel. And that meant that his energy had given it away.

Something was wrong, and it took X barely a moment to recognize it as he worked his way steadily around the system, positioning himself near their left flank. They must have believed that there was one entrance, so they were focusing the bulk of their forces on it, because they didn't expect an attack from the tunnels. That was their first mistake, but X was sensing something beyond the mistakes they were making.

Where was the sorcerer that supposedly led them? These were all Otherverse creatures of the elemental order; there was no mortal mage among them of any world. There were other physical worlds besides this one, all linked by the levels of the Otherverse, but they weren't a danger to each other. They were far too static for that.

Then suddenly X sensed him, dropping down from a fissure above. With lightning speed he whirled, bringing his blade up to intersect the man's fall. He should have realized that no one who could sense him and his capabilities would have made such a mistake.

One hand locked on to X's sword arm, and a cold so deep that it burned paralyzed that hand. Abandoning that tactic, X seized the man by the neck, flipped him over, and kicked him. It didn't hit the mage's face as he had hoped, but he heard the satisfying snap of shattering bones.

The man rose, cradling his left arm. Taking advantage of his disorientation, X loosed a net of brilliant flame from his hands, which succeeded in thawing the heavy layer of ice that encased his right hand and forearm. He flicked his fingers, almost casually, and the man was encased in flame. His armor may have been fireproof, but his face was not. X watched with satisfaction as one eye blackened completely before the man could put out the magical fire.

They separated for a moment, circling one another, testing for weaknesses. The mage had done something to his body which dulled pain, which was foolish and dangerous. Taking advantage of X's much greater height, the man slipped sideways and kicked him hard in the kneecap, attempting to partially disable him. All he hit was nerveless metal reinforcements.

So he's multi-talented, X thought savagely. All the more fun it will be to kill him. He swept the mage's legs out from beneath him, but the man rose again, his hands weaving complex gestures.

Darkness surrounded X, and he laughed from its center, a chillingly alien sound. "I am the master of the darkness, mortal!" he said. "You cast darkness around me and it will be the last thing you ever do."

He reached out, batting the man aside like an insect. Again he swept the mortal's legs out from under him, lifted him by both arms, and with a slight twist of his wrists, he shattered the bones. Still holding on to the mage, he sent elemental energy surging through his body. His hands exploded in beautiful crimson light, and he hurled the man away from him, the flesh of his forearms charred down to the bones. Fire sliced across his body as effectively as any blade, and he struck the far wall with a sickening _crack!_ He slid down to the floor, his body folded at an unnatural angle, his spine snapped completely. The entire battle had happened too fast for the mage, a mere mortal, to effectively cast magic.

And then they were upon X, a howling storm of elements thrown around him like a net. With a careful magnetic pulse, generated by a device imbedded in one arm, he summoned his blade back into his hand. He cast webs of flame toward a pack of water elementals seeking to trap him in ice, and they melted, screaming, unprotected by their former master. A tornado of hot and cold wind spun around him, and he used it to fuel yet another burst of fire, igniting a chain reaction that destroyed the elementals controlling it. Now he was faced with fire and earth elementals, a handful of misaligned energy, and a strain of crystal music that hadn't been bound into a coherent form. It rang discords based in G and A minor at him and charged, casting a band of crystal chords around his right wrist, immobilizing it. The band writhed like something alive, seeking purchase on the rest of his hand and arm, jangling in a discord that somewhat resembled fingernails scraping a chalkboard in G minor, with additions.

Reaching out, he cast his senses into the breach and pulled on the essence of wild magic, making him more elemental than mortal. This was extremely dangerous, he knew, but there was no other choice. He had to trust his own self-control. He bent and breathed on to the band clamped to his arm, and it burned so hot that it melted into rivulets of glowing liquid. He lifted his right hand and flung the stream of melted pseudo-quartz (which was a much tougher substance than Earthly quartz) across one of the earth elementals. Caught unprepared, it split in half and melted. It struck one of its peers, fusing the creature to it with still-cooling crystal. There were two living earth elements left, one of which was severely disabled, three of fire, and the partially-wounded crystal music, not to mention the Discord-energy.

Speaking of which ...

He felt its whip of decayed, unstable energy whistle through the air. He tried to twist away, but it struck his right shoulder and left a deep furrow down his arm, from his shoulder to just below his elbow. Agony ripped through his arm, but it didn't go numb; the energy whip hadn't done that kind of damage. He managed to hold on to his scythe, sternly commanding the sensors in his right arm to shut off pain. This made fighting harder, because he didn't have a ring of eyes with which to watch angles and elementals all at once.

Meanwhile, one of the earth elementals had split the rock around him until it held his lower body in place, and one of the fire entities was fusing it into place. He twisted sideways, braced his hands against nearby outcroppings, and gave a mighty kick. The rock around him split with a resounding _crack!,_ his left heel struck something solid, and half-molten rock buried one of the fire entities. Carried backward by his momentum, X seemed to half-spin, half-sail through the air in slow motion. He hit the other side of the corridor and slid to the floor as the fire entity screamed, dying, under the pile of rubble. He scrambled to his feet and left it to put itself out slowly. That hadn't quite gone as planned, but it had taken out two more of the creatures, which was more than he had expected.

He picked up the struggling earth elemental and slammed it into the crystal music, which had begun to melt in preparation for another heat attack. It should have known better. The action irreparably shattered the crystal and melted straight through the other creature, until they were a pool of molten rock eating through the floor.

This left the energy, two fire elementals and a last earth entity, summoned by its peers' deaths. X could feel his strength flagging, and he cursed inwardly. He could battle the Discord power with his electronic implants, disabling it magnetically until it dispersed. But he might not have the time for that, what with three others on his hands. He couldn't get any more to melt one another. He would have to switch tactics. One of the fire elementals was bound into a mortal form. If he killed it, it would disperse. But he was still dealing with its three companions.

With one hand he wove a net of fire and cast it across the corridor, and with the other he spun his heavy blade back through the flaming strands until its edges glowed red. Spinning and weaving through the light in a series of movements designed solely to confuse the entities, he carefully drove the mortal-bound elemental away from its companions. He sent a magnetic pulse through his right hand and swept it down to intercept a tentacle of the Discord-energy before it could touch him, severing and dispersing it. He caught one of the elementals' right arm, severing its hand, and then pressed his attack until he drove it back against a wall. Feinting with the scythe in his right hand, he reached out with the speed of a striking snake with his left. He lifted it by an arm and whipped its body sideways, tearing its shoulder apart.

It lashed out with its remaining hand, its claws raking down the side of his face, narrowly missing his right eye. Meanwhile, the Discord moved up on his left, carefully avoiding his blade, for now it knew that he could send magnetic charges with it.

The remaining earth elemental moved up on his right, smashing down on his right wrist. His scythe dropped from his now-nerveless fingers, but he took that second to slam the mortal into its companion with such force that its physical body's neck snapped.

It was a good thing they knew nothing about electronics, or they would have seen the magnetics for what they were. Instead, they thought it was his blade that created the disabling charges. If they had realized their mistake, he could have lost his arm earlier. He swept his right hand across in a gesture that surprised the other entities, aiming straight for the center of the energy-strain. Before it could react he had ran his hand three times through it, disabling it so badly that it completely dispersed, sucked back into the Breach.

A sudden wave of weakness came over him, and he swayed on his feet. I don't have it in me, he thought. I'm still weak from the poison. I'm alive, but not back to full strength.

_X!_ _No!_

The suddenness of the sending startled him. No one had communicated with him that way since Zeia Amaari, and she had forged the link out of necessity.

But he knew that voice.

It was Taneia.

With two elementals hell-bent on revenge, his internal electronics failing from overload and repeated interference, his organic body suffering from the punishing beating it had been dealt, and his energy at a nearly critical level, X sent back: _They're coming for you, and I might not survive. Ward the complex and send for reinforcements. Do not do this alone. There are maybe fifty of them. You will never make it._

And he shut down the connection. There was no need for her to feel the moment of his death. She needed focus, and he could not help with that. He was here for the Barrier alone-not for any human.

It was the first time he'd freely admitted that he could die. Before now, everyone had known that it was a possibility, but no one had said it.

Sometimes words seem to give some truths substance, lending them added weight, forcing you to take notice of them. And every now and then words hold a special and dangerous power-the power of belief. That, more than anything, makes them real. That makes a battle of words more dangerous than any battle of science or magic. Those have the potential to end the world, but when centuries have passed, the land will heal. Words can change the course of the universe.

If the world ends it is better this way, better it be quick. X had never been one for torture; he killed quickly and efficiently and never looked back. It was what he was made for.

He turned on the final two elementals, fighting with a desperate strength that couldn't last. Desperation was a human reaction. His kind were determined, but not mad; there was a point when survival became more important and the more practical tactic was to retreat, regroup, and re-examine your strategy. Yet X had been among humans for too long.

The two elementals were wise to the tactic he'd used to melt their companions earlier. In a stroke of good luck, he managed to drive the remaining earth elemental into the pool he'd made of the crystal music, where it thrashed and sank and he could finish it off. Taneia would have called it a medium-sized miracle.

The remaining elemental feinted toward his left side, and then struck at the hand holding the blade, which had already been partially disabled. He had only managed to hold on to it long enough to kill off its companion, but that blow finally hit solidly where there was no metal, shattering part of his wrist and hand. X responded, but his reflexes were too slow, and the creature's claws hit home, digging a furrow down his forearm that grew deeper until it grated against the metal and bone shards of his wrist. Taking advantage of his weakness, the creature rushed beneath his open hands and kicked him in the left knee, then in the stomach. X struggled to stay upright, but he slipped on the slick, mostly-cool crystal and went down, hard.

Swaying on his knees, ignoring the pain in both of them, he reached out toward the creature. It didn't expect such a direct attack, and seeing the opening he left, it went straight for his chest. But he closed his hands around its neck, dropped his barriers and cast himself into the breach. For a moment nothing happened; his drained spirit was too weak to do anything except ride the tide of light like a rag doll.

Suddenly his entire body jerked forward. The frozen elemental had less than a second to react before X slammed into it. A shower of rocks fell around him, but he ignored it. The heat in the room grew intolerable, but he was a creature of fire and darkness elements alike, and he simply withstood it. He focused on a point directly behind the elemental's head, forcing heat and light into a spear of brilliance that struck and melted an entire section of tunnel.

At the last second the creature got its grip and gouged a deep furrow into his left side. He reeled, blinded with agony, and nearly let the creature go. But before he could hesitate, before his body could convince himself not to, he hurled the elemental the length of the tunnel with desperate strength. That whole section was falling in, and it would be consumed by melting and cooling rock.

The pain was so intense that it knocked X out completely, and for a moment his mind danced on the edge of the breach, uncertain but unable to depart.

And the world went up in a shower of crimson light.


	7. Chapter 7

Listen to:

Within Temptation - Toward the End

Chapter Seven

Command told Taneia matter-of-factly that there was little they could do. X's relayed warnings made little to no impression on, "We'll try, but we can't make you any promises." So now three hundred men and women waited for help that might not show up, faced by a horde of fifty mid-level demons. X had taken out the mage; they'd seen that much. And no one knew what happened with that. Taneia had felt him on the edge of death, and silently prayed to whatever powers that be that they wouldn't lose him. And then the sense of him simply vanished. There was no trace of X in this place, and after all these years it made it seem empty. He was like a permanent fixture, always there, the echo of his presence everywhere.

And now he wasn't.

The perimeter alarms lit up in the tense, expectant control room. Anxious techs and grim-faced soldiers passed each other in the corridor, running to man the pulses or the control center or the sensors or to wait for a signal from Command. Others were headed for the main entrance, but they were all aware that it was useless. They would just have to count on the fact that the tunnel funneled enemy numbers into a small space, but with magic involved, that could be more trouble than it was worth.

"X didn't make it. How can we?" one of them asked Taneia as a line of soldiers filed toward the entrance.

He's too young to be here, she thought. Instead, she said, "Because we have to. Because everything is at stake-our lives, our homes, our families, the very world we live in, is at stake. They fight for conquest, but we fight for life and freedom. Ultimately, the fire that burns us is stronger." Which doesn't mean we'll win, she thought, but by God, we'll try.

We'll try ...

She was caught up by the mad whirlwind of it-running from pulses to command to the sentries to the exit, over and over. It could all be monitored from Command, but Taneia felt like she could only trust her eyes. God knows when or if their interference shielding would give out-they had to be prepared for everything and anything, which was impossible.

She was standing in a for-once-deserted corridor when she felt it. Something had rushed toward her, brushed across her senses, flowed through her mind like water. The presence folded around her, the color of night flecked with the red fires of a million distant stars. It ran through every nerve ending and for a moment she panicked as she felt it assume control over her body.

Then it receded, fluttering against her senses, present but merely observing. It was cold, but fire burned in it like suns. It was dark, but lit with the brilliance of distant supernovae. Galaxies reeled within it in unreachable silence, but it resonated with deep chords in strange keys and cadences. It was calm but not quite serene, for it observed all the evils of the world and knew their natures. It knew the shining heights and understood the blackest depths. Yet it kept itself tightly confined to some space in between, in constant vigilance, for only it knew the full extent of what was coming.

"X," Taneia breathed into the silence, and felt the recognition resonate in her mind.

X's first sense of true awareness was of nothingness, sensory deprivation so complete that he was like a naked mind in a true void. There were no surfaces, not even the sense of being contained within a form of any kind. For a moment his mind froze-and then he realized he was in Innerspace, that place of the mind before and after all worlds and forms. It was supposed to be a place of unconsciousness, a place somewhere between the end of a life, true death, and the beginning of the next-never here, never there, but not truly between one place and another, simply existent yet nowhere at all. So tightly had Zeia bound him to this world that nothing could take him from it, yet since he was nowhere, he could not be in it or beyond it. It was the only way he was allowed to exist at all, for the time being.

Tentatively he extended his awareness outward. He had not always lived in a world of time and space. Sometimes he had existed within the unformed non-essence between all worlds. He had dealt with that. Yet that place had energy, unshaped though it was. It always cried out for form yet despised those who gave shape to it, but at least it existed. And in a complete, impossible paradox, he existed but was nowhere. He was real, but was nothing. He had no form, but had awareness.

This is counterproductive, he thought irritably. There must be a way to exist. I cannot be nothing nowhere. I am something, but still nowhere. As far as I know, this is impossible.

Instead of extending outward, he searched inward. He examined each and every relevant thought he could discern with detail, attempting to trace them to their sources. And then ... there was something, it was other, it was not him, and it was attached to him.

It was something that existed somewhere!

He rushed into it, exploring physical sensation, then surroundings-an empty stone corridor. And then he rose into the thoughts themselves and found a startled being, a mortal, a human-

It was Taneia.

His memories fell into place in a rush and were reabsorbed in an instant. He knew who and what he was, not simply the nature of his essence and the primal energies he was born into, but the histories of his lives and the spaces between them as well.

Taneia's first reaction was to push him away. He indicated to her that he would do no harm, he would simply stay and listen and not act or react. She was hesitant, but he did not plead with her. He would not beg until he was broken; he was too proud for that. And maybe he wouldn't even then.

He felt her usual sense of exasperation at him and she slid her barriers carefully aside, and then closed them around the tendril of thought he extended toward her. He didn't dare send more of himself to her, though it was sorely tempting to truly exist. It would destroy her body, and it would not do to kill his only link with the universe. He made a more thorough examination of her surroundings, both physical and mental, and then sank to the edge of conscious thought, and listened.

With X attached to her, Taneia was more careful. If something set him off he could react on instinct, trying to use abilities that were second nature to him. She wasn't enhanced, so it would put her brain into such an overload that it resulted in physical damage. She would die or be a vegetable for the rest of her life.

X recounted to her, in bursts of concepts and images, where he was-or rather, where he wasn't-and how he had gotten there. She sighed, didn't pretend to know all the nuances of magic, and promised to do what she could. _ Meanwhile,_ she told him, _be_ _careful._

She sensed something from him she didn't think she would sense-a great sorrow, echoing and hollow. _ I_ _will_ _try,_ he said. He ended contact but stayed pressed against her senses, always there but always silent.

She moved on to the tunnel entrance. There was someone balancing on a massive outcrop several hundred feet in the air (she knew because she knew where everyone was), and he spotted her as she approached.

He spoke into her implant. "Dr. Amaari, they're closing fast, but they seem to be distracted by something."

"Do we have sensors in there?"

"If we do, they're offline."

She relayed the question to control, to which Miri replied, "Some kind of explosion knocked them out."

X's body, she thought. "They can't get this space," she said to the man in the tunnel. "We can't save X's body, and if they get a foothold in this world, they could learn too much from it."

"Understood." The message was clear: Eliminate them completely, don't even let any back through the breach, or die trying.

X stirred in her mind. _ You might not be able to send them back._

_What?_

_They could be locked in, like me._

_But they can be killed. Or sent to Innerspace. Or_ ...

_Zeia did not have a full understanding of magic. She was more well-versed in it than any other human, but her error kept me aware in Innerspace. There is a spell, I do believe, though I know little of how humans work magic. I know wild magic. There is a binding that forces my kind to stay in the world of their master, and become elemental at death rather than disperse._

"_Shit,"_ she said with feeling, imagining a cave system full of raw elementals.

_The process is exceedingly costly, but it can be done._

_I hope to gods you're wrong,_ she responded.

_I know I am not,_ he answered darkly, and then the obsidian sense of his presence withdrew. She held on to its residue. It wasn't serene, but it was like a steadying hand. It would keep you from falling into madness, but it would not protect you from knowing it.

But it was better than the other option, which was going mad.

_X,_ she said into the terrible silence he left in his wake, _don't_ _go_ _away._

_You grow humble enough to admit that you need me here, Doctor?_ he said. His tone was gently sarcastic, uncharacteristic for the stoic elemental.

She didn't say anything, but she didn't need to. She knew that he wanted, more than anything, to exist again. There was little either of them could hide through a contact so intimate, which must have unsettled him, for he never revealed any part of his mind to anyone. It was a note of pride for him to be unreadable, to perfect his mask.

She stepped away from the entrance and made her way through the labyrinthine complex to the control center. The adjoining rooms held the pulse stations, and a small, heavily shielded space at the back held the communication and encryption equipment. The humming and chirping of conversing machinery was a constant background to activities that had changed from routine to desperate in a matter of hours.

In stark contrast to the room and its equipment, a space in the center of the circular room had been cleared, and a woman with long, dark hair was kneeling on the floor with a piece of chalk, painstakingly stenciling circles and runes on the stone floor. The expression on her face was intent but distant, and her startlingly blue eyes glittered with the intensity of her focus.

"Lila Iluani," Taneia's second-in-command, Rick, told her. "The world's leading magician. She was here studying the breach, and her timing coincided with ... this." He waved his hand at the ordered chaos around them.

"Why haven't I seen her? I knew she was supposed to be here—"

"She arrived two days ago, which was right after X's last batch of enhancements and right before his India mission. You were on the far end of the complex from her. It's a big place."

"I usually make it a point to welcome visitors."

"She came all the way from England. She came in, ate, slept, and got into her work. You wouldn't have had much time."

"Is she, what, Dr. Iluani?"

"Just Lila," a musical contralto voice said, from directly behind them.

Taneia whirled around, startled. Lila unfolded to a much greater height than she would have expected. No one was as tall as X, but Lila was a few inches over six feet. She had the face of an ancient Eastern noble, with strong, sculpted features and ebony skin that shone with health. Her deep eyes were a dark, clear blue, framed by high cheekbones, arched brows and long lashes. Her waist-length hair was pulled back into numerous intricate braids. She wore a dark suit of some form-fitting material that Taneia couldn't quite place, covered by a loose grey robe with a clasp of beaten silver formed into a rectangle set with runes which Taneia didn't recognize, but X did. She wore a heavy golden chain with a golden spiral embossed with intricate script, and another necklace on a silver chain that looked for all the world like an ancient, tarnished coin. Turquoise, ruby, emerald, topaz, and strange orange stones that looked like they had captured fire in them glittered from delicate golden bands on her fingers, yet simple strands of onyx and hematite encircled her narrow wrists. A heavy anklet of intricate silver inset with agates flashed from her left ankle, and strands of several types of obsidian decorated her right. Her headpiece was a disk of burnished gold inlaid with a fine spread of amethyst flakes, and two nearly invisible golden chains attached it to heavy discs of silver inlaid with sapphire and diamond adorning her ears. On anyone else but Lila Iluani it would have looked gaudy and ridiculous, but it had much the same effect as the crystal caverns. Magic pulsed from every stone, setting and link until the colors glimmered in a diffuse rainbow aura around her slim but strong form.

Taneia glanced from her to the half-finished circle behind her. "You're drawing that from memory?" she asked, aghast, for the only books she saw were closed.

"Those who learned the craft practiced from memory," Lila said. Her accent was a barely present lilt, which only made it more noticeable.

_Your_ _magician,_ X said, his presence like a steadying hand, _is_ _not_ _human._

Taneia did not let her expression betray her. "How much further do you have to go until it's complete?"

"I am nearly finished," she said calmly. "I have already placed wards around the complex, more than you had but not as much as I wished to make. There was no time."

Taneia gestured to the circle. "What does this do?"

"It's a dimensional gateway of my own," she said. "I believe these creatures are locked to this dimension and will not disperse at death. If I am correct, the circle will override that phrase at the critical moment, drawing elementals toward this circle and through it."

_I think I can overload her magic,_ X stated flatly.

_Why?_ Taneia asked.

_Because I want back in,_ he sent at her, and the hungry, reaching darkness of his energy nearly overwhelmed her. She almost lost her balance, but she managed to stay on her feet. _ I can force my way through her portal when it is nearly complete. She will not have laid the runes to keep things from coming in until the last moment._

_Isn't_ _that_ _unwise?_ she asked, ever the cautious one.

A sense of utter confidence exuded from him. His arrogance shocked her, but it was purely, completely X, and paradoxically it made her faith in him stronger. Even the shocking nothing of Innerspace wouldn't break him.

_I know my own abilities,_ he sent. _ She knows I am not here; she sensed my passing. She could not face me._

He sounded so certain, yet all he had were her senses to judge this, and hers weren't nearly as good as what he was used to. But X would walk into the pits of hell with that arrogance, and it exasperated Taneia to no end.

"There's something out in the tunnel!" the sentry's voice crackled over the comm.

"What is it?" Rick asked.

"I don't know, but it stopped about thirty feet from me and won't let anything near it."

_It's_ _not_ _me,_ X said simply.


	8. Chapter 8

Listen to:

Shinedown - Fly from the Inside

Chapter Eight

Taneia whirled. "Bring it up on the main screen, if its damn energy hasn't fried the sensors."

A young tech scrambled to obey, typing furiously at her console. "This is the best I can manage," she said.

The image that came up on the curving main screen was blurred as if by smoke, but it showed what it needed to. Light flickered off the rough-hewn walls, from the lights at the entrance and from what looked like fires in the cavern beyond. What was outlined in the hazy light was both awesome and terrifying. It stood almost twenty feet tall at least, on four long, graceful legs. Its front legs were longer than its back legs, so that its long body rose into the air and towered over its surroundings, its legs stretched forward slightly so that the line of its body was a graceful arc in the darkness. It had scales like polished emerald, flecked with brilliant gold and deepest blue. Its head was long and triangular, like a dragon's, and its eyes were flashing blue-green jewels in its narrow face. Its massive jaws opened to expose crystalline teeth like diamonds, which were easily over a foot long. Its long, graceful neck turned this way and that, exposing magnificent blue bands that glittered like burnished sapphire. Its body arched lazily like a cat's, stretching to show its sleek muscles to maximum effect, exposing the flecks of gold glinting in its hard, metallic scales. It had massive, golden wings, loosely folded across its back. They stirred now and then, showing delicate, translucent membranes between the strong wing bones. Its legs were slightly darker than most of its body, but they were banded with onyx instead of sapphire. Its wide, three-toed feet were darker still, tipped with huge crystalline talons that looked sharp enough to cut metal. It should have looked like some kind of creature, but an uncanny intelligence glittered in its eyes.

And beside it-

"Is that a human?" Taneia asked, startled.

"That's Dentin," Lila said, "a human magician, rumored to be immensely powerful, though he denies that all day long. I have never met him, however, so I have formed no opinion of him."

_Haven't heard of him,_ X said flatly. And after a strange pause, he cryptically added: _At least, not by that name._

Taneia leaned in to get a better look at the man. She couldn't see much of him, but time seemed to have changed his appearance as much as magic. His hair was pale, bleached by radiation due to the thin ozone layer. His skin was dark, weathered by the merciless sun, and his eyes looked strange from here, but the cameras weren't good enough for her to see what it was, and the smoke was gathering. Nevertheless, he stood calm and unperturbed beside the great creature, as if he showed up in war zones with strange entities by his side on a daily basis. It wasn't just calmness it was seeing, it was confidence as well. It was something akin to serenity, a state most people never seem to learn to achieve.

Then again, he very well might do this every day.

"Does he have a last name?" Taneia asked.

"None that I have ever heard," Lila said.

"What would he be doing here?" Rick asked.

"The readings here are off the scale. He may have simply followed his creature," the tall mage calmly replied.

Rick shook his head. "It's too much of a coincidence."

"Whether it is or not, you should activate audio feedback," Taneia said.

_I think I know_ ... X's thought was a bare whisper in her mind, almost imperceptible.

The tech touched a few controls, and the room was filled with the sounds of the tunnel-echoes of distant, unnatural sounds, the occasional flutter of the great creature's wings, the skitter of its claws on the floor, the ominous, electronic _whirr-chuff!-chuff!_ of the pulses ...

The ageless-looking human standing beside the leg of the great creature looked up calmly, as if he could see the visual pickup mounted into the ceiling. "Taneia Amaari," he said, in a voice that completely surprised her, "I know quite a lot about your project. And I know much more than you do about what you are up against. Perhaps your grandmother had an idea, but then, it wasn't so bad." It was deep, but not as deep as X's, slightly accented, and very calm, as if he were talking to her in a completely normal world. Ha, normal-whatever that meant ...

Something like a shiver in reality ran through the space around Taneia. _ Innerspace_ _is_ _shattering!_ X said. _ Fragmenting,_ _I-_

A searing pain exploded through Taneia's head and down her back, knotting itself in her chest and twisting through her stomach. She collapsed, and Rick bent over her. Curse that calm, nearly serene voice saying: "You need me, and you know it. You must let me in. _ Time_ _is_ _broken!" Time is broken! Time is broken! It wasn't desperation she heard. It was a strident bell call, but it was filled with … anticipation._

Lila was chanting something in a soft, beautiful language, and her voice was almost musical, so lovely that tears swam in Taneia's burning eyes.

And reality shattered.

X was standing beside her, lifting her body, and blood was running from her nose and mouth. "Eternal!" he called.

"No," the figure said, "no Eternal. I am a mortal."

"You lie, Eternal!" X said, and his power rolled out toward the screen as if the surface was a barrier. It hung just short of the crystal plate, like a living creature that had to be reined in, real enough to fold through your hands like fabric, solid enough to feel the life in. Whatever he had been, it was nothing to what he was, and the world was going to suffer unimaginably for it.

"It's your transformation that has broken Time. That much is obvious. But the question is how you could have done it."

"Do not put the blame on me for the very thing that your presence has caused, iia-Anórí saan-Emarani!" X said, his voice dangerously quiet. "Come through that barrier, where I can get a better look at you. _ Come through, by all that is unholy."_ He didn't add inflection or volume to his voice; he just added power to it, until it was something you could feel and fold between your hands.

"I can't step through the barrier. You have to let me in!"

"Bull _shit,"_ X stated flatly. He extended his right hand, fingers spread, and then yanked backward as if he held a rope. The main viewscreen shattered, spraying melting crystal down on the heads of the panicked techs in Control.

"Now come through that gate!" X thundered. There was a cloud of smoke, the sound of wires snapping and hissing, and Dentin was standing beside Lila's intricate pentagram, examining it as if he were examining a simple problem in code rather than a world-changing piece of magic.

X set Taneia on her feet, and Rick appeared as if by magic to lead her away from the center of the room. He set her down in a recently vacated chair and went back into the chaos that Control had become, presumably to find X and answers.

"Dr. Amaari." It was a soft, musical voice, and Taneia looked up to see Lila standing beside her. How the woman had managed to move so quietly was beyond her. "I know what you carry inside you. His magic has quickened within you. You have no idea how powerful he is. I only began to get a glimpse of the extent of it."

Taneia's head snapped up. "No one gets pregnant overnight-at least, no one shows positive the next day." She didn't bother demanding why _everyone_ seemed to know that she'd slept with an Outsider. She was exhausted, her head hurt, her eyes were burning. Each muscle in her body cried out in protest at her every movement, and she wanted nothing more than to go lie down, and maybe sleep, alone in her own bed. No X, no complications.

"You carry not one but two signatures," Lila said. "They may be too powerful to sustain the first few months, even with you to support them."

"That's not any consolation," Taneia said weakly, hating herself for her ineffectiveness in a time when her project needed her. She drove home the realization that she was useless, and looked up at Lila. "I shouldn't be here."

The beautiful woman's face hardened, becoming something chiseled out of ice, exotic and coldly lovely. "Are you going to walk out on your project now? Are you going to walk out on your race-your entire world? Are you going to walk out on X?"

"X is an Outsider," Taneia said. "He needs no human."

"Oh, Taneia, don't be stupid. Even if he doesn't, your project does. And you check his power. He needs that, whether he'll admit it or not. He may not need you to love him like a human woman would a human man, but he needs your influence to keep him from dispersing. The Barrier is so weak that he might, and he's in complete turmoil-but he can't leave. He's said it to you before-it would be catastrophic. You live behind the shields of the Old World's idea of a normal mind. He can hide anything he wants from you, including his own fragility, because he thinks he's goddamn indestructible."

Lila's sudden outburst startled her. "That doesn't make any sense," she said.

"Humans really know nothing of magic," Lila said. "You've developed a very specific connection to X. Since your grandmother, the one who bound him, isn't here anymore, you have taken her place." When Taneia opened her mouth to speak, Lila raised her hand. "No, listen. Sex can be used to join two people, or to bind an entity. The latter is unconventional, but it's been done before. Your grandmother bound him traditionally, but the combination of her absence and your humanity and your relation to the person who originally tied him to this dimension was enough. Magic doesn't waste any opportunities."

"I should know that," Taneia muttered.

"Stay here," Lila said. "Be with him. Keep him from destroying all of us. You still have something you can do."

"If the magic has quickened, as you say," Taneia said, "how long will I be pregnant? And what do you mean, I can still be useful? You say it like something's happened-besides what's already happening ..."

"If you don't miscarry, which is the most likely event, then it could be less than seven months. And I mean you won't be useful soon. Bearing incredibly powerful children, especially in a much shorter time, could potentially kill you."

"You know a lot about it," Taneia said.

"Because I took care of many women who were raped by Outsiders in mortal form," Lila said. "It depends on the perfection of their forms, what they're capable of creating. Some of them warp their bodies to such an extent that they're sterile, or their children are stillborn. Still others can't control the power they exude, so their children are all miscarriages. Very few successfully sire children, most of which are mutants. It's only the rarest, like X, with the control and perfection of form required to impregnate a woman with a healthy child."

"Great. I was hoping you'd say he's too elemental right now."

"He could be," Lila said. "I am no judge of that."

And suddenly Dentin was there, with X beside him. Taneia looked up at him-and took a double take, glancing back at his face. But she had seen correctly-magic had turned Dentin's eyes an odd, softly-glowing silvery color. Power didn't breathe off of him like it surrounded X, but he was unreadable, almost to the point of lightness. Any attempt to see further failed, like trying to climb a glass wall-there was no iron resistance or fluid resilience because the outside was flawless enough that there didn't need to be. If there was, you simply wouldn't think twice about it. And in a normal situation, it would be so casually accomplished that you'd never even question why. But this was no ordinary situation, and Taneia wondered at its strangeness.

"Can your creature take down their main lines?" Taneia asked.

"Easily," he said. "It's no problem. I'm here because of the Barrier."

"Of course."

Lila straightened up, putting her hand protectively on Taneia's shoulder. "You're _only_ here for the Barrier."

There was a slightly amused look on that magic-altered face. "Of course," he said lightly. "Why else would I have come?"

If Lila managed to seem any more like an angry cat, she would have hissed and unsheathed her claws at Dentin. She was sleek and dangerous and very, very powerful. "Don't _bullshit_ me," she said flatly. "You don't get up and travel across the country for one thing-and you certainly wouldn't tell everyone your actual reason."

He cocked an eyebrow at her, or what was left of it after the radiation had gotten to him. "Really? Lila, the circle of powerful mages is small. I wasn't aware that you had become a strong mentalist."

He had survived through magic, and was probably only alive now because he still relied heavily on it. According to all accounts, Dentin was over a hundred years old, yet without the effects of radiation he wouldn't have looked a day over thirty-five. And according to X, Lila wasn't human. So there was more to every powerful mage than met the eye.

"I am no mentalist," Lila said.

"No, she's not a mentalist," someone said. "She's a lesbian."

Taneia turned to see Dr. Alexander standing there.

And Dentin did something that surprised her. "Her orientation doesn't control why she judges me," he said, leveling Dr. Alexander with a piercing, and-did Taneia imagine it-slightly contemptuous look.

"He's pure Old World blood," Taneia said. "Ignore him."

He threw a resentful glance at her. "I'm respectable. No Outsider blood, no freak immortality—"

"If you are going to start throwing accusations around," Taneia said, "you can easily be dismissed. You don't want me to get up and order you out of here, because it wouldn't end there. You have no _idea_ how many people dream of the prestige of working under the influence of this facility, so I suggest you leave while you still have your position. Command doesn't take kindly to prejudiced, spoiled brats in coveted positions."

Dr. Alexander whirled and stormed away.

"His position won't be around to covet before long," Dentin said. Taneia, sensing premonition again, wondered if it would ever end.

Which was probably a very bad idea, because something in the universe seems to have an idea of what goes on in your mind.

Taneia turned to the room at large, which Rick had returned to some semblance of order. A knot of techs was standing nervously some distance from the bulk of the damage. A cleanup crew was already on site, and the only two who had been wounded-those who worked on the sensors and therefore were directly beneath the explosion-were already being taken away. Tilin was standing a respectful distance from the group, observing in that quiet way he had. He could act light, even humorous, but he missed nothing.

"Commander," he said, "Rick is taking everyone to backup control. Command's in contact, and they say the bridges in Africa and Asia are open again. There's rumored activity somewhere in the Outback, and something in Alaska and Russia. Breach reports have drastically increased in number and severity in the past three hours. Dentin's creature has cut down the advancing lines, and they seem to be regrouping. I estimate that a team of high level sorcerers are at work, with various items that allow them to work from afar."

"I shall go out again," X said.

It was the first thing Taneia was aware of him saying since Dentin came through the screen, or whatever he had done. His eyes had bled to softly simmering pools of dangerous red, and he moved so very carefully, a roiling storm of power contained within a simple mortal vessel.

"There is no space in Innerspace," Dentin said in a tone that said he appreciated that irony. "If they kill you, you will be destroyed, fragmented, and it will rip a hole in space big enough to annihilate this whole desert. Its far-reaching effects would span the entire planet."

"And that's just from a snap calculation?"

He smiled. "Even my snap calculations are rarely wrong."

Lila simply raised an eyebrow. Taneia didn't understand the animosity between them, but she let it lie. It wasn't a good idea to bring it up in front of both of them, because it wouldn't get her anywhere. They'd both turn into brick walls and she'd never get any answers out of him.

X turned slowly, deliberately, carefully. Was it Taneia's imagination, or did his outline shimmer, power dripping off his body as if he were brimming over with it? His eyes were flat, burnished crimson, his pupils swallowed by light. "Do you have a better plan?" His voice was almost distorted, and roaring conflagrations crackled within its sound.

"Yes," Dentin said. "_Both_ of us go out there."

X raised one arched eyebrow in icy, mildly surprised silence.

Lila gasped. "What has just crossed the wards?"

X whirled, black cloak swirling, and glided toward the door in that transitionless stillness-to-motion gait he had that seemed to unnerve everyone so much. X didn't just seem like a force of nature, he _looked_ like one.

Dentin sighed and turned to follow him. "Jesus, he doesn't listen to anyone, does he?"

"No," Taneia said, rising. She followed Lila and Dentin out of the room.

Tilin ran to catch up with them. "Taneia, if Lila's right, you shouldn't go out there."

"It doesn't matter," Taneia said. "I'd rather stay alive to make a world worth living in than curl up in a hole and wait to deliver some poor kid into hell. Even a super-advanced one, whatever that means."

She didn't try to outdistance him. The only one in the facility he couldn't easily keep up with was probably X. He was a big man of Native American descent, with proud, chiseled features and a perfect male body-the kind of man that men want to be and women want to be with-strong, handsome in a dark, ageless kind of way, quiet, and intelligent. There was potential in him-perhaps for violence, perhaps for many things at once-but it was controlled, channeled into a purposeful energy.

He put on a burst of speed just before they reached the entrance and flung out an arm to stop her. "Wait," he said, and the controlled tone in his voice made her afraid to look. But she had to.

The first thing she was struck by was the creature's pure magnificence. It was massive, filling the whole cavern beyond with its sheer physical presence. It was like to the creature Dentin brought in form, but there the resemblance ended. Its body shimmered-no, almost glowed-with flawless metallic scales in every hue of flame, from shocking crimson to brilliant yellow-gold. Its body beneath all that fiery beauty was strong enough that if it lowered its head and charged, it might simply walk through the whole facility, regardless of walls. Taneia couldn't tell if it had wings folded along its back, or if they were simply layers of flame, shivering restlessly around it. Its feet were tipped with talons that looked to be made out of a cross between diamond and fire agate, burnished flame sharp enough to cut through steel. Its jaw opened, showing rows of teeth like shards of diamond, the shortest of which was over a foot long. It was worthy of any nightmare, and of the world it had set foot in.

It turned its fiery gaze toward Taneia, and for a moment she could neither move nor speak. Her world narrowed down to that icy, alien regard. In it she saw her future. In it she saw her death. In those eyes of brilliant, sun-colored fire, she saw unspeakable evil.

She took a shuddering breath, not realizing that she had been holding it, and tore her eyes away from the creature. She became aware that Tilin was speaking softly, almost chanting, in an eerie sing-song manner: "And the world shall be rent into a thousand shards, each pearl of reality thrown to the winds. Discord shall reign therein complete, for he will cause the walls between all worlds to fall, and time shall be swallowed in cleansing, obliterating flame. The creatures of all worlds and times shall battle eternally until the substance of the earth cracks asunder and the world is bathed in its own blood, and by his hand its fires shall destroy all of what was, what is, and what will come to be. In all worlds made one we shall battle until time has no meaning and legends lose substance, and he shall remake them into reality unending. For all things will exist and then exist again. Time will be unhinged, and the birth and death of all things will become constant yet never static. There will be one world and there will be many, a blasted dreamscape of eternity unbent by the hands of the Dentin, the Absolute, Alpha and Omega, Breaker of Time, he who is creation and destruction wedded into one creature which knows no beginning and _has_ _no_ _end_ ..."


	9. Chapter 9

Listen to:

Bullet for my Valentine - Four Words to Choke Upon

Chapter Nine

"Look out!" Dentin said. The creature reared and screamed a blood-chilling, semi-melodic shriek that ran off into the surrounding caverns and broke into a thousand echoes. Flame flickered between its diamond teeth, but that was the only warning anyone got. A column of fire gouted forth, lighting the whole cave an eerie red. The heat wave alone knocked Taneia back, and she could feel her skin blister, smell frying meat ... She scrambled to her feet, and Tilin grabbed her and ran. He could run with blinding speed, so quickly that the entrances inside the facility blurred into one corridor-long door after another. Not only was he simply fast, but his reflexes were almost unparalleled.

"Outsider," she whispered.

"No," he said. "Semi-Eternal."

"Dentin's?" she asked, remembering X's comment.

"Who would have done him to begin with?" Tilin asked incredulously.

Taneia choked down a laugh. "He's not stunningly attractive, but damn! That's harsh!"

"No," Tilin said, laughing. "_He's_ the Outsider!" He got serious and finally set her down, deep within the facility. "_He's_ an Eternal. Don't you remember-we were briefed on the Eternals. That information came straight out of the Badlands disguised as magic and fiction, almost a century ago now. He _reeks_ like an Eternal."

Taneia snorted. "Great way to put it. Is that the weird impression diverter shit he gives off?" She'd known Tilin for ten years. There was no need to be formal in front of him.

"Of course it is."

They both whirled.

Taneia couldn't tell whether it was an Outsider or one of the new genetic experiments, or even, come to think of it, whether it was a he or a she. The figure was less than four and a half feet tall and only relatively humanoid, but it hovered several feet in the air, deliberately just above eye level, so you'd have to look up at it. It had a pair of massive black wings whose tips rose above its head in graceful arcs. Its seemingly metallic scales were so black that they shimmered with blue highlights. A circlet of gem-tipped horns rose from its scalp like a crown, catching the light every time it moved. Its face was flat, its nose unfinished, its gleaming multicolored eyes tilted at a strange upward angle, its mouth filled with small diamond fangs. It shed light from its body almost in layers, if layers of liquid could exist and if light could be fluid. For its lack in height, its strength was impressive. Taneia could see muscle rippling under the raven scales. She realized that it deliberately oozed power, shivering with a heavy magical energy. But this was forced. Its arrogance was not X' certainty, but a disdainful one.

"How the fuck did you get in here, creature?" Tilin barked.

It turned its flat gemstone eyes on the battle commander, a look of near incredulity on its small, slanted face. "God," it said, "you really _are_ slow. I mean, I knew the first time I met you that you were unbelievably stupid. I knew before you ever said anything. You humans just _drip_ idiocy. I just didn't know how bad it was."

"Don't be fucking difficult, creature," Tilin gritted out.

"Don't _call_ me _creature!"_ the creature snapped petulantly. "I'm not a _creature._ I'm an intelligent being, unlike yourself. If you really have to ask, I shouldn't tell you, but because your precious world is at stake, I will. I teleported. It's a simple matter of knowing how space folds. I know about the world that's coming to exist."

"How?" Taneia snapped sharply. She was going to kill people if she really had to suffer this being to live much longer. She already knew it.

"Oh God." It got that half incredulous, half long-suffering look on its face again. "I folded _time._ Can none of you honestly fold time? Jesus, what kind of world have I landed in?"

"The one I'm trying to protect!" Tilin said.

"Get the hell out of my facility!" Taneia snapped.

"Oh, see, there's a problem with that," it said. "I can't do that."

She almost reached out to shake it, but as soon as she lifted her hands, some unseen force batted them away. "For one, because I'm more intelligent than the people I've seen so far, and for two, because you need me, because I know all about the world that's coming to be. I know how it works. I know what kind of sad, semi-useless creature governs it. Give this one up-you can't save it."

She turned to Tilin. "Do I _really_ have to suffer this creature to live?"

The being threw her a cocky grin. "Of course. You could never kill me."

Tilin sighed. "Unfortunately."

"C'mon," it said. "I know how to fix your creature problem. Dentin's probably fuckin' making it more beast so you can't fight it, or taking away your resources to deal with it." It beckoned to them. "And his creature? Pansy when he's not so elemental and a bit more mortal. You'll see later. Actually, maybe not. I never saw you around in that time." As if _his_ not seeing us meant _we_ didn't exist, Taneia thought.

"Go with him," Tilin said. "He's an ass but I think he's being honest right now. If he doesn't want us to, we probably won't die. ... Oh, I do see the problem with that ..."

"Dentin's there," Taneia said. "Hopefully someone can handle that creature. And I refuse to hide back here while everything I've worked for goes up in flames." She winced. It was a bad pun.

Great, Taneia thought. It'll be his way of saying we owe him something later. I know people like this inside out.

They followed the creature-"don't-_call-me-creature!"_ back through the facility. He didn't quite move like Tilin, because he wasn't running. _ He_ didn't blur, space around him blurred. He moved with a seven-league boot effect, like taking one step and being much farther away. And because they were following him, the same effect covered them as well. It was disconcerting, stepping from section to section of the facility, so that in seconds they were back at the entrance.

Dentin and X were circling the creature. It didn't look like there was much fighting going on; it looked like there was a lot of evasion going on. Dentin's creature was nowhere in sight, and Taneia wondered what would happen if it appeared. It was much more agile than the beast in front of them, but it was also smaller and wouldn't take concentrated damage as well.

"Distract it," the demon-creature barked, and darted straight for the thing's face, its wings a blur. It gestured and cast a few words about it, and ice crystallized in the air around it. A heavy magical haze rose in a shimmering field that clung to its body like something alive. A golden glow coalesced around its head and then dissipated. A silver flash encapsulated it and then was gone. Its skin turned into something that resembled obsidian. And then there was more, things that Taneia could feel rather than see, like shifts in its reality. Its clawed hands were a blur, weaving complex symbols in the smoky air, which appeared as silver outlines under its fingers before fading away. Suddenly a storm of wind and ice billowed out from around it, a wave of bone-chilling cold whirling through the entire cavern until Taneia could see her breath puff in front of her face. The flames around the creature flickered, almost went out ...

And now Taneia could see it again, and it was darting in circles around the creature's face. It flared its wings and scooted across the ceiling, wheeled, and dropped vertically hands-first, slashing at the thing's eyes with a blade that shimmered as if someone had hammered it out of light. It avoided the next blast of flame with a mighty downstroke, fanning fire back into the being's eyes, and rose to circle again just below the ceiling. For a moment Taneia wondered if it was still showing off, but then she realized that if it'd gone in at any other angle, it would have been scorched, the delicate membranes of its wings completely fried away. And even if it could stay on its feet after something like that, it didn't look like it would be too graceful on the ground.

"Creature," as people seemed to call it, signaled to X. "You can take fire hits better than I can," it said, its wings a blur as it whirled near the ceiling, assessing the situation. "Dentin, don't even try any Eternal magic on us, because that's just lame. Unless you want to help us, whereas that's just cool. Tilin!" The big man moved reluctantly forward, but not within the range of the massive creature's attack. It had lost an eye, and was still reeling from the injury. "Hit for me. X, be useful and keep Tilin from getting blasted to pieces, if you'll even last long. You're a fire and shadow elemental, but barely useful while you're mortal. Lila. Stay over there and heal for us. And do try not to get yourself killed."

Creature flared its wings and dove. Tilin darted forward, trying to get beneath the-dragon, there was no other word for it-to its sensitive underside. X stepped smoothly into his place and flung up a net of fire, narrowly managing to catch the creature's next blast. The thing lashed out with its right paw, slamming into his chest and dragging its claws along his skin. X staggered back, swaying slightly, but he righted himself as the creature came at him. It slashed at him again, this time hitting him in the shoulder and spinning him away. It kicked Tilin across the room with one of its back feet, where he lay dazed in the shadows.

Again the small winged being dove for the thing's face. It spread its arms wide, almost as if it would wrap its arms around the beast's neck, but instead it backpedaled furiously and flung its arms outward. The room was filled with thousands of falling ice crystals, which dissipated as soon as they hit the floor. Taneia would have thought it was eerie and quite pretty, if she hadn't been busy scrambling backward in a pointless attempt to outdistance the wave of numbing cold that swept throughout the cavern. Even though it was centered on the dragon's face, the temperature change was so sudden that the shock of cold burned those too close to the caster.

The massive beast reeled, disoriented and hurt, and Creature seized the advantage. He dove in a dazzling whirl of attacks, spinning and ducking and aiming for the soft spots around the thing's nose and eyes. But he couldn't move fast enough to miss all the blasts. One grazed his side, narrowly missing his left wing. He circled in confusion, giving the beast the moment-

-it would have needed, had Tilin not dove in and drove his spear into the soft joint between the scales of its shoulder. It screamed that eerie scream of its, but this time it wasn't defiance it screamed-it was pain and desperation. It wasn't overconfident anymore, which made it much more dangerous.

Creature regained its balance, but its left hand, its casting hand, was blackened. Taneia guessed it had sustained massive nerve damage. Its hand was clumsy and stiff, and casting by relying on a hand you have to manipulate externally, without your other hand, could result in disaster. Magicians who lost use of a hand were next to useless.

It raised its head and circled for a minute while Tilin and X distracted its adversary, staring in shock at its damaged left hand.

It flew in to land next to Lila. She and Taneia were sitting in the mouth of the passage, anxiously watching the proceedings. Every now and then she would stand and cast a hasty but neatly-performed spell, doing what she could for the combatants on their side, and she had already applied her magic to the burns Taneia had sustained when they first encountered the creature.

"What is your name, child?" she asked.

It glared at her. "I'm no child!"

"I'm older than you could possibly imagine," Lila said. "To me, you are a child."

"I have no name," he said. "Creature, Demon, It-but I have no name, I'm—" He paused. ?-epic. I don't _need_ a name." Whatever he had been about to say was probably very different from what he had said instead.

It silently offered her its hand. She took it and examined it, turning it over between her palms. She reached her right hand out and placed her palm on its brow, singing in that language-that-was-song that she'd used when Taneia had fallen.

"I can't do as much as I could in the world that will be," she said.

"You can fix it, right?" it asked.

Lila was silent.

"Right?"

She sighed. "There's no way ... now, like this ... maybe technology could fix you; these people are still strong in that knowledge."

"But there's still something you could do? Restore it for a little while, maybe?"

"I'm sorry," Lila said. "I can't. The nerve damage is too great."

His wings snapped forward in a blur. (She had to call him something other than it, and he didn't seem very feminine.) Taneia was surprised at their strength; the breeze they generated was enough to push her back. He rose off the ground, and the look on his face when he lifted it toward them was enough to still her completely for a moment.

Creature had given up. His eyes were empty wells of pain. He knew in that moment that he would never see his homeworld again, and that was more than anything in him could stand. He had gone from believing he could be anything in the universe to knowing that he could never be anything again. But the look was there for only a second, and then his face drew into hard lines, his eyes glittering. He had nothing to lose. He was much more dangerous now.

"I'll need you to cast," he said to Lila. "You don't have to do any more than you can." That was uncharacteristically generous coming from him.

Then he whirled, a blur simply too fast to follow, and dove back into the cavern. In that moment, his skill was unparalleled, rage and defiance driving him to entirely new levels of ability. He had no left hand, but his right still held on to the lovely sword he wielded, and it moved like an extension of his arm. Anyone else would have been amazed at how he fought. But inside, Taneia mourned another death, another sign that her world simply would not keep existing. Every time and every world rejected one another. What would it take to put it all back together? And what would it do to the person who could manage it?

Tilin and Creature drove the beast back bit by bit. With every passing moment he grew more able, as if the more his pain was magnified, the stronger he became. The more he lost his cocky, arrogant self, the more he became cold and bitter and angry, the more he became. He was amazing. But it took destroying him to bring it out in him.

I don't care how much you hate someone, Taneia thought. If you're going to kill them, do it quickly. This should never happen to anyone. He had lost his universe and remained alive. It was a perversion of reality; it simply should not be.

He dove past Tilin as they drove the creature into the back wall. Another blast of fire seared down the side of his face and slashed his shoulder, scorching his side and charring the edge of his wing. For a moment it looked like he would plunge straight down, impaling himself on the great beast's teeth, but he dropped out of the air and landed clumsily, his metallic claws leaving gouges in the stone. With a wordless scream he launched himself beneath the arch of the creature's neck, plunging his blade in at the place where neck-segments and natural armor met. He drove it upward to its hilt in the creature's flesh and pulled it out with a mighty yank, tumbling across the floor, trying to outdistance the wave of scalding lizard blood that fountained forth. The dragon was mortally wounded now, and if they didn't get a safe distance from it, its death throes would certainly crush one or more of them. Creature came scrabbling to a stop in front of Lila and Taneia. Dentin, X and Tilin ducked back into the mouth of the tunnel as the creature dragged its head forward on its now-useless neck, spraying blood from between its crystalline teeth. It shrieked again, a long, despairing sound that was cut off by a horrible gurgling noise. It flung its head sideways, losing all its senses. Its body swayed and it crashed to the ground, shaking the chamber so hard that Creature bounced and rolled painfully along the stone, barely conscious by now.

It lay there, its legs twitching for a moment. It could no longer contain the fires in its body, and everyone scrambled back into the tunnels as its flesh erupted with volcanic heat.

"Creature!" Taneia said, craning her neck back to see where he had landed.

"Don't save him!" Tilin said.

"Damn you, Tilin! That's a fucking _life!_ I don't care how irritating it is!"

"Which is why you _wouldn't_ have been commander of this goddamned facility! You don't know when to make necessary sacrifices!"

"So the fact that you hate him makes him the sacrifice? _Fuck_ that! That's ridiculous and you know it!"

"You defend people who don't even deserve it!" he screamed back. The conflagration behind them sent a roiling wind down the tunnel, nearly knocking them off their feet. Dentin was turning back to them, looking exasperated. "This is the same person who hates us for being human, hates people for having weaknesses, acts like the goddamned king of the universe because he's strong and fast and intelligent and he thinks that entitles him to _everything!_ He _likes_ the fact that he's a mutant because it makes him one of a kind. Some people will _die_ to be unique and, in their eyes, better than the whole motherfucking universe! He's one of them! A lost cause! You saw him break! _So_ _what?_ He was stupid. Survival of the fittest. He would have said the same thing about us. He will never forgive you for going back for him because he thinks he doesn't need you, and it will damn you in his eyes. If you go back for him, he'll know you're weak and use you, and when he's done with you you'll have signed your death warrant."

"He saved our lives!" Taneia shot back.

"He saved us to prove a point. He saved us to prove that he was the only one who could do it. Taneia, you have to understand-it was a big fuck you. It was him telling us that we're worthless and we couldn't dream of being as powerful as him, so we need him. He's one cold, arrogant son of a bitch."

Something sank in, leaving Taneia feeling hollow and sick. "What do you mean, I wouldn't have commanded this facility?" She could barely even hear her own voice over the roaring behind them, and breathing was becoming impossible.

"I pushed to have you put in place," he said. "I pulled every string I knew-not because I was proving a point to you, not because I wanted you to owe me something, but because I _believed_ in you. And that's more than that piece of shit has _ever_ done for us, more than he ever would do. He's not capable of caring about anyone or anything beyond himself and his overblown ego."

But Taneia was turning back anyway. She almost stumbled over him; his black scales were covered in soot and the edges of his wings were nearly scorched away. She didn't know or care if he was conscious; she just hoisted him up and ran backward as fast as she could, but he was a hell of a lot heavier than he looked.

She should have sensed it coming. She felt his body tense with crackling potential an instant before his grip was on her arms, hard as steel; his eyes flew into focus, and before she could blink, she was pinned immovably against the far wall. He was breathing too fast, and something dangerous and painful glinted in his dark gem eyes.

"Don't," he said, in a raw, barely-controlled voice, "touch me."

He released her so quickly that she went staggering backward and wheeled away, his proud wings dragging, barely managing to stay on his feet. But he would not accept help from anyone, not until he lost another piece of himself. His pride couldn't handle it.

"Tilin is right," he said. "You should have left me there. If I'm so weak that I need you to save me, I'm not worth saving at all. Unless you were trying to prove something, bitch, because if so, point taken." He limped off down the corridor after the others.

"Men," Lila said. "One and the same." She helped Taneia to her feet and guided her away.


	10. Chapter 10

Listen to:

Bullet for my Valentine - Tears Don't Fall (for Creature)

I have nothing for X here. I welcome suggestions.

Chapter Ten

Lila had done what she could for Creature's wings, and now they sat in the depths of the beleaguered complex, in backup control, listening and waiting. Creature took something out of a dark bag made of some thick, pebbled lizard-like hide he wore and strapped it to his left wrist, bending it down over his fingers. It was some kind of metal glove which resembled a massive, clublike hand when it was in place.

"I was building it," he said, "out of extremely rare materials, back in my own time."

"How?" Tilin asked.

"Why should I tell you?" he snapped.

"What does it do?" Taneia asked, cutting Tilin off before he could say something that would inflame the situation.

"Things you can't do," Creature said smugly. "It's not complete. I wish I could complete it now."

"Oh don't be difficult," she said.

"Kicks the shit out of things," he said. "That's all you need to worry about." His tone broached no further discussion. Exasperated, Taneia sighed.

"Are you ever going to do anything useful?" Dentin asked Creature.

"You could do something useful," Taneia said. "You could tell us where Creature came from, his history, why we should trust him, maybe even his _name-in_ fact, you could tell us the same about yourself."

"Why don't _you_ do something useful?" Creature asked, thrusting his left hand in Dentin's face. "Heal this! _I_ killed the creature, and you haven't done shit! Your _dragon_ hasn't even done shit!" He stuck his chin up like a defiant child, getting a set, unreasonable look in his gem eyes. If he were less impressive-looking by nature, Taneia would have laughed at him, but she remembered his incredible strength and the impossible speed at which he could move, and she bit her lip. She would not push Creature.

"You're trying to act like you did something impressive," Dentin said, "and you look like a petulant child. You _shouldn't_ trust him one bit. But right now it's in his best interests to keep you alive. Isn't it, Creature?"

He flinched and looked away, uncharacteristically subdued.

"You have nothing to worry about from that one yet," Dentin continued. "He hasn't figured out a way around his predicament. But don't get me wrong. He is very intelligent. Staying one step ahead of him can be a challenge."

"What did you do to him?" Taneia asked, shocked. What kind of person were they trusting everything to?

"I told him that I would make him human," Dentin said. "You see, there is one thing this frightened, egotistical creature cares about. He definitely has a vested interest in keeping this world in one piece so he can save his ... mortal."

Taneia sensed it an instant before it happened, something you dredge up out of the part of your soul that must be more Outsider than human. Creature's massive wings whipped forward and he launched himself into the air, his shining blade appearing in his hand as if by magic. His left hand, despite its injury, still moved almost too fast for Taneia to follow. There was nothing wrong with the arm it was attached to. He struck in a series of blinding patterns, and blue light exploded across the left side of Dentin's face. He moved so fast that the light from his gauntlet seemed to cross Dentin's body with azure fire, as if it didn't have a chance to fade before he struck again.

The unreadable immortal calmly picked him up beneath the wide wing joints set into his shoulder blades and shook him until his sword clattered to the ground and his wings fell loose in a dark, disheveled shroud around his body.

Dentin dropped Creature and he staggered back, swaying on his feet. A sound escaped him, a single inarticulate cry capable of embodying rage, fear, desperation and sheer hopelessness, the kind of sound you hear in your nightmares. Taneia would never be able to describe that kind of sound.

He collapsed, his wings falling about him in protective black folds, and remained so still that Taneia thought for a moment that the pain inside him had actually killed him. It had been known to happen before, but then again, he was at least partly Outsider, and they were a much more resilient lot when it came to emotion. Oh, they had them all right-their passion, hatred, and promises all ran much deeper than most if not all mortals'-but you would never disable one that way.

Tilin exploded to his feet. "That's ridiculous, Dentin! What are you trying to do? Torture him until you lose a valuable asset? You _know_ what Lily means to him! Even I won't go that fucking far-if I wanted to kill the fuck, I'd do it cleanly!"

"I have many valuable assets," Dentin replied, unfazed.

"So that's why you're so damned calm?" Lila's voice was like silk, if silk can come at you so fast that its stiffened edge can slice you open. "I saw Lily lose her baby. I held her hand, nursed her back to health and made a five-year-old girl sleep so that she could die in peace. And you're doing this to him simply because you're running out of amusement and you have a fucking backup plan?"

Taneia backtracked for a moment, shocked. Lila, cussing like a sailor?

And then she registered what she had said. "Creature had a human body?"

"Once," Tilin said, "when he was less elemental, before his time transfer. He had someone he loved. She didn't stay with him because she didn't want to commit to anyone in a world like this. She had a daughter by accident, which she was afraid to tell him about because he's an Outsider."

"That's fucked up," Taneia said. "And when did all this happen?"

"Ten years ago," Lila said. "Dentin punished her for knowingly being with an Outsider and having his child by giving her perpetual youth. She's permanently somewhere around twenty-seven or so."

"Somewhere between twenty and twenty-five, actually," Tilin said.

A shudder ran through Creature's body, all the way to the trembling tips of his wings, and Taneia quickly switched the topic. "How many human mages are left out there? And how many of those damned warriors the Outer Time spawns? They might claim to be human, but they're nowhere close, and they have the strategy to bring this world down before the Barrier does."

Tilin sighed heavily. "We can't tell. Someone gave them intel on our perimeter. They've been splitting off in groups of threes, blasting down our sensors. They've started on one of the pulses, but that seems to do considerable damage to them. They can't man a full-scale assault on them yet, so we have our own commanders out there trying to keep them split up. If they regroup in front of the entrance, there's always the surface exit."

"That's too dangerous a route to take," Taneia said. "And if they regroup by the entrance, we're screwed, because it means we've lost the best casters available to us." It was a testament to how hurt Creature was that he didn't shoot back some kind of remark along the lines of, "I'm epic enough for all of them."

"As long as we're holed up down here, we're screwed," Rick said, coming into the room, "and if we're forced to head for the surface, we're more screwed. I don't like the thought of trying to defend an area in the middle of the desert."

"At least you'll have room to run," Creature said. "I don't like the idea of being holed up here a mile belowground waiting to die. I waited to die for most of my life. I decided at some point to get off my ass and do something." He rose slowly, retrieved his sword, sheathed it and made it disappear into that utterly cavernous bag he carried. Taneia could swear she heard it echo as it clanged into something in there. He was brittle and breakable as hell, and no matter how much he knew, Taneia hated relying on him for anything. There should have been another option. But this wasn't a normal world anymore.

"If we get out," Taneia said, "we have to leave the country. Evacuate the complex, clear the area completely. And then the group of us goes to Britain or Ireland or India-hell, even Alaska-somewhere with a massive energy reservoir."

"We can't use them," Dentin said. "The key to most of them is blood, but not just any blood. So unless you happen to be a miraculous melting pot of powerful genetics, you'll have to go for Plan B."

"Relying on you and Creature?"

He didn't respond, as if to tell her what she could do if she really needed to ask that question. Arrogance, Taneia thought. Everyone has their own brand. X's could get irritating, and Creature's could prove to be a liability, but Dentin's was frightening all by itself, because it wasn't so obvious and it affected entire worlds. And he probably didn't even see it. X and Creature wore theirs like cloaks and used it as a weapon. Eternals were made with it.

"You mean there _are_ Outer Time warriors out there, or whatever you call them?" Creature asked, for once without any added commentary.

"Unfortunately," Rick said.

"Who?"

"Winter and Nightwing and a few others."

"Jesus H Christ!" Creature said. "Winter may be relatively new, but I'd hate fighting him _and_ Nightwing and half the pack they've convinced to follow them about all at once. Especially since they know they can convince some of the oldest ones to come through with them. And _especially_ like _this!"_ He made a sweeping gesture with his left hand and left it in in the fold of a wing, like some unwanted burden. "Dentin, you ridiculous universe-bending _ass,_ why don't you do something about it?"

"I have an agreement. Demons and creatures I can break in an instant"-and Taneia knew his word choice was deliberate-"but I have kept them safe, kept them from dissolving into the Rift. I'm not going back on it unless one of them does something that warrants it."

"That all depends how far up your ass each one is," Creature shot back.

"Can't the two of you cooperate?" Taneia snapped.

"No, They can't," X rumbled. He had the uncanny ability to stand so still that shadows settled where he was, so he could be hard to notice. Only inanimate objects could be that still. That and the dead. "Creature volunteered, I vote he go back out there."

"I'm better than you in a fight any day!" the small, deadly creature snapped.

"Not in this form," X said.

X's body hadn't healed the wounds it had suffered earlier. With an effort of will akin to moving a world, he had dragged innerspace itself to move it. It was wild magic, and no one knew how it worked. X was very much made from wild magic. When it shattered, his binding drew him back in to it. Taneia thought now that she had felt it, sort of, a distant agony of tearing thoughts and broken bones. Instinctively she let the tension in her mind relax slightly and reached around, feeling the familiar shape of her wards.

Her senses collided with something vast and alien, like being pitched through a door in a sunny field in to outer space. Galaxies rushed by Taneia's mind's eye, and storms of light plumed in silent brilliance as individual stars exploded. Worlds boiled over and stars went black and everything was sucked downward, as if in to a drain. Everything else there was very still, as if one movement could set all that violence on the world around it. There was no breath, no sound, only fraying control.

You should never have been here. X's voice was a quiet bass rumble. "You should never have had this connection. You will be just another casualty in the Barrier war. A wave of force came toward her, and she was swept out of the image. He had suddenly become more distant and arrogant than ever, as if he were a rubber band, and he could only snap back.

Creature started to reach in to his seemingly endless bag. "Really? Try me!"

X just gave him the most withering glare he seemed able to muster, and for X in any state, it was enough to scorch a good layer of skin off. Creature turned away, sulking.

Uneasy silence settled over the room, and Taneia finally let her eyes take in the beating X had taken. His right arm was a blackened ruin, the hand hanging limp and useless, bone showing through the crackling flesh. He favored his left leg, which almost dragged behind him, and his face was a mass of fissures, burns and dried blood. Something made the left side of his cloak cling to his body, dry and stiff, and Taneia knew it was blood. His left eye was strangely fixed, pointing off in one direction. He smelled like ozone and charred flesh, and there was an unsettling level of bleakness surrounding him like a shroud. It felt to Taneia like being trapped just out of sight of an inevitable horror, and she wanted to reach through it, to the X and the past that she'd known, and not this awful, universe-bending chaos that seemed to grip everything. Once there had been optimism in this place, and now there was only death, waiting with its trademark patient disregard for time.

Lila approached X and held out her hands, palm up. He sighed and peeled the cloak away, and Taneia covered her mouth to muffle a gasp.

Under those black layers there was a twisted, swelling gash, with blood still trickling out of it, the padding beneath his breastplate seemingly fused to its edges. Lila motioned him to sit down at an abandoned console, and for once he complied.

Taneia watched Lila unpack an entire case of supplies, with enough tools even for minor surgeries, and begin to cut the cloth away. Some light in X's eyes went out, and Taneia knew he was checked out, gone to some dark place in his mind where no light or sound had ever lived.

"You think you can heal any of that?" Tilin asked.

"The surface wounds, the broken bones, yes. Easily." Lila began to sing as she applied some strange blue mixture to X's face. Damage disappeared beneath her hands, and Taneia, instead of reflecting on the impossibility of one situation or another, simply absorbed what she was doing.

Lila's hands left his face completely undamaged, and she moved on to the minor abrasions and bruises his legs had sustained, and finally to the gash in his side. She hadn't even looked at the damage done to his arm yet. Carefully, she cut away the material that clung to it, and then her hands went in to her case, deftly picking through tools and potions. Blue and then red liquid went in to the wound, something like a pair of knitting needles came out except they flicked strands of light and never touched skin, and slowly but surely, the hole began to close.

She took his hand in both of hers. At this point, half his gear had been stripped away, exposing all of the damage he'd sustained. One of the scientists who'd studied X' technological reinforcements was beside them now, unpacking a case of tools so he could work on the damaged knee that Lila couldn't fix. He looked over the arm, verifying that there was nothing broken under what Lila was about to go over. She worked her magic on most of his forearm, but by this point, she was ashen and sweating, and she left the man to his work fixing X' broken knee and wrist joints. It would have normally been done on an operating table, but the damage was so extensive that bare metal showed, and they had become used to improvising the repairs of his mechanical bits.

He spoke directly in to her mind. I respect you enough to show you what you need to know, and I know you are under a great deal of stress. I am telling only you this, and trust your discretion in revealing it to another. First, the matter of my condition: I am stronger than I have ever been, but you must understand this is very dangerous. Holding so much power in a mortal and physical world has put me in an extremely difficult position. Innerspace did not technically shatter, but my own is ... gone. Innerspace, for me, is you, but that is impossible, because it will kill you if that happens again. And in some way, the code states I bear some responsibility for you since it was my actions which put you in danger. Those rules only apply to beings worthy of respect, and for a mortal to deserve the respect of any of my kind is unheard of, let alone any level of trust. but it was you who drew me back. I could use the very life I was connected to to draw me back in to my body, which was only possible because it was only dead in the sense that I had been separated from it-the damage I suffered didn't actually kill me. In a sense, a part of you is irrevocably a part of me, and vice versa. I heard Lila speaking to you earlier. She said I needed you to check that power. You are in an unusual position, caused by your relation to the mage who bound me and your ... connection to me. The explosion you felt was the release of energy as I reverted back through an elemental form in to the manmade one and what caused a great deal of damage to your sensors. your connection was accidental. I would not have done such a thing to you willingly, but in that state, I was my every intention and not my self control. It is a thing we can do, bind another entity. Humans have no comparison because it is not like being with you. I will not even attempt to explain the mental workings of it. I am bound to you in a way that I was never bound to your grandmother. There is nothing I can hide from you, and nothing you can't take from me. Do not do this, Taneia. Even if I had no reason to put any trust in you, telling you would be necessary. Don't make of me les than what I am. It would be all too easy for you.

He fell silent, leaving her to mull over what that meant. There was an emotion there, but it was too far from a human connection and too close to pain, its sharp edges demanding. She had no name for it, so she let it lie. It was the closest to emotion she'd ever see in him, and the painfully bare and exact words carried a weight she had never heard in another voice, thought or spoken. He was vulnerable to her, and he would cope with it on his own. She could not help him like one would attempt to help a human, because it would insult him, and because the only help she knew she could try to give would be for situations that weren't even eqquivalents to theirs. She could only hold up for so long either, but she also knew the same would hold true for him even if he had any urge to do anything for her-whatever either could do would simply be too different. All they had was the cold comfort that they both knew and felt exactly what the other was going through.

She thought for a moment, and all that she could find to send him in return were three moments-her being lifted over a literal lake of fire, that reaction to his actions during the first serious breach problem that had happened near the facility, and him looking down at her, asking what he would have her destroy, and the look of his eyes full of red light, asking for her trust. There were no words for these things, nothing that would be good enough for a situation this dire, and her memories could not lie.

She focused on her surroundings again to find Dentin looking at her oddly, and Lila looking like someone had just kicked a puppy. X' wounds were closing, slowly but still closing, so she knew she had been somewhere in her own thoughts for longer than she knew. X looked as expressionless as ever, his eyes like windows out on to space, but she didn't mind that so much, because it was what she used to, and she would not push him, whether there was anything to find or not. The concept of both belonging to the other-she his, and he hers-but not emotionally connected was utterly foreign to her, and something he knew more than any human. Whatever happened next was in his hands, she would not push his boundaries. Though, she thought suddenly, there were no boundaries anymore. The realization left her strangely uneasy.

X' eyes flickered toward her, and Dentin's focus switched to him as if to bore through the elemental. Comprehension crossed his face, and he looked away. Lila put her hand on Taneia's shoulder and sighed.

Creature was observing them all with an uncanny interest, and he opened his mouth as if about to say something, and then, even more surprisingly, he seemed to think better of that.

"He did it, didn't he?" By Tilin's tone, Taneia knew what he meant, and she nodded.

X' eyes flickered to Tilin, pinning the big man. Tilin inclined his head toward the elemental. "Will you do this traditionally? There will still be measures taken, as she has all of Zeia's knowledge imprinted in her mind. I'm going to assume you want control of that relinquished to you."

X nodded. "The traditional way would be safest. Your input is still necessary, as I have no wish to disturb the system you have all put in place any more than it already has been. Dentin will certainly know more than I, but my position on this is more solid and obvious, and I will be that deciding factor."

"Can someone tell me what's going on?" Taneia demanded.

With his usual refreshing directness, X turned to Taneia and said, "You are a piece of me, both physically and mentally, as surely as a thought or a limb. It is in my best interest to keep you safe, and in yours for me to be the one to do it. This can never be undone, and if you live to die a natural death, it will sort itself out then. If not ... the results would be less than preferable. you are my responsibility, but not, in any way, my property-no more so than I would be yours."

"X," said Dentin, "I have a plan worked out to reinforce the area's wards. I want to use some of the energy you're exuding instead of tapping in to a store, because it would have the added benefit of making the area less of a beacon, and you won't be putting as much strain on the dimensional fabric here."

X rose, silently, casting Taneia a strange look. Lila looked pointedly at Dentin, who ignored her. Taneia looked around to notice everyone staring unashamedly, ignoring their individual displays, and sighed. Everything was out in the open now. The world's neat little handbasket had been capsized, and they were headed to hell without even that luxury.

"We might as well let the next shift on," she said to the room at large. "Everyone is exhausted, and at least fresh minds can hold down the fort." That seemed to be their cue to disperse. X trailed Dentin, somehow without looking like he was trailing him, out of the room. Tilin went to find Creature a place to stay-even if he didn't sleep in it, most everyone needed one. Rick was long gone, checking the status of their remaining sensors and pulses. When Dentin's ward was up Taneia imagined they would make some headway on fixing them, barring all other possible developments.

"I would go back with you," Lila said, "at least to see you to your rooms. We are fairly certain nothing is inside the complex, but you can never be too sure. And you're in no fit state to face off with anything."

"Thank you," Taneia said, genuinely relieved. It was good to have someone who was willing to listen and explain things, and safe to be around, whether there was any danger out there or not.

As the evening shift began to trickle in to the room, Taneia rose and made her way toward the door, Lila trailing her. She was completely exhausted, each movement requiring an inordinate amount of focus, and she would be glad just to sleep. In her first days here, whenever there was some kind of scare, she'd tell herself she'd never get to sleep, but she learned better. She would sleep like a log, she was too tired for anything else.

As she rounded the corner in to the corridor, her knees seemed to turn to liquid, her vision greying out. She had barely the energy for a small startled noise, sparks of confused energy sending her thoughts spinning and one hand out to catch her fall, but it never landed. Lila had moved like liquid and lifted her with ease, mid-tumble.

"Calm down, Taneia," she said gently. "You have not slept well, and much of fast healing comes from your reserves as well as mine. It would not do to destabilize your condition now. Sleep."

"But ... let me, I can ..." Taneia began, reaching out a hand for the wall beside them.

"No," Lila said firmly. "You are safe, I promise you. Sleep." This time, the word was imbued with power, and Taneia felt her eyes sink closed, despite her resistance.

Some unknown time later, she was aware of movement, familiar surroundings, a warm bed. A hand came to rest on her forehead for a moment and the sense of X intensified, like a shimmering field. Her own defenses opened for him automatically as if he had always been a part of her awareness. She pried her eyes open to meet his, too exhausted to speak.

"Would you have me go away?" he asked simply. Nothing else. No strings or connotations. Just X.

She shook her head weakly, unable to dredge up the effort to care what he did.

"Then sleep, iqhaelin." She couldn't even wonder at the unknown word before her eyes closed again.


End file.
